A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman Page B

bread that became less stale in the salty broth. When the shells had been sucked clean, and the bowls wiped clean, old Marvellous took out a small bottle of sloe gin and filled her glass and downed it in one. Her cheeks began to glow. She slipped off her glasses and rubbed her eyes and they squeaked because they were so dry.
    Are you all right? asked Drake.
    Marvellous nodded and refilled her glass. Tonight I’m old, she said. Most of my life I’ve felt like spring but now I’m winter.
    May I? said Drake and he reached over and smelt her glass. Sloe gin, he said.
    Make it myself, and she raised the glass to her lips. It usually helps.
    To feel young?
    She smiled. No, to remember, she said.
    Drake drank his ale. I was wondering, he said. Your mother. Was she buried over there? and he pointed to the church and cluster of gravestones.
    Oh no, said Marvellous. You don’t bury mermaids. They go back to the sea. My father carried her into the river when the waters were high and on the turn. He said a rogue wave came towards him crested by gold, and the wave enveloped them and the waters unpeeled my mother from his grip and carried her back to the warmer seas of her people and her birth.
    And what happened to you afterwards?
    To me?
    Yes, he said.
    Oh. I was sent to London to be brought up by my father’s sister and her husband. It was quite clear by then that my father could barely look after himself, let alone a baby.
    Where did you go?
    I don’t remember. But we lived in a big house and there was little light but a lot of God, and so many things . And they gave me everything a child could want including a new name that I didn’t want: Ethel.
    You’re not an Ethel, I think.
    No, I’m not, am I? Anyway, I didn’t see my father again until I was ten years old. It was like meeting a stranger, albeit one who had the same smile.
    What kind of life had he had? asked Drake.
    I suppose I’d have to base a lot on speculation.
    I won’t hold you to anything.
    That would be a good thing, said the old woman, and she nodded her thanks. She said, From what I gathered – and this is the speculation part – my father went through quite a transformation after my mother’s death. He was a man who, up until then, had not even been known for rudeness. But overnight he became a man full of hate, and most of all, his hatred was for God. Which in truth, I believe, was really a hatred for his father, who was a strict man, very religious, who later became a doctor. No doubt thinking that with feet firmly planted in both camps, salvation could be secured.
    Marvellous sipped her gin and smoked her pipe. Where was I? she asked.
    God . . . ? Medicine . . . ? Your fath—
    Ah yes. Well, either of those two pathways my father was expected to take.
    So which one did he choose?
    Neither. Choice didn’t really come into it. On one hand he was scared of God and on the other he was scared of blood. He took his inheritance and fled to sea. Made a fortune. Indigo.
    So when he woke up one morning and had as his first sight a House of God, you can imagine, it near destroyed him. Kindness made him angry. The sight of the first bluebells made him seethe. And every day at the close of day when the world stilled, the utter emptiness of life alone filled him with dread. So he prayed for a sign from my mother, prayed night and day for permission to end his life.
    Did it come? asked Drake.
    No, said Marvellous. What came instead was permission to live . One morning, he was awoken by a fearful sound coming from the coast. He headed towards the shore thinking a large steamer had run aground, but what he found when he got to the sea was the sight of a large grampus whale wedged between the rocks, tearing off its own skin in the instinctive fight to free itself. That was the sign my father needed, and the following morning he locked up the boathouse and what little remained of his heart, and he took to the road.
    Three hours into the journey the rain