A Finn Story

(Another postcard from Port Brokeferry. Remember that Mad Martin mistakes Edwin for Finn. Finn was an old sea-dog who owned the boat that Edwin now owns. Edwin, for his part, keeps alive the memory of Finn  through the stories he tells. He tells one here.)

A FINN STORY FOR MAD MARTIN

He was far from home, was Finn. Weeks away from the certainty of land. Out on a rough sea. Under a rolling grey sky. The wind was so hard and the sea so cruel that they were all bound to the ship with rope. Everything tied down.

‘Everything tied down,’ said Mad Martin, for he had heard the story many times before and recognised Edwin’s words.

You’ve seen the fairground rides on the green at the far end of the town. The ups and downs of them. Turning the stomachs of some so that they afterwards feel sick or dizzy or unsure of their own legs. Imagine days of this and all that was keeping you from being blown away was a thin rope reaching from your waist and tied to the rails of the ship you sailed on.

Bran was listening too. Pretending that he wasn’t. Coiling rope was what he seemed to be about. But he was listening, and for him the story was new.

Finn was the only man not sick. Though his thoughts were all tossed about, like the flecks of white in a snow-globe when it is shook over hard. A man can be called mad on the third day of weather such as that, for he does not think straight. Does not see straight neither. Fears for his life and his fears do play tricks on him. Finn said he was mad then.

Mad Martin was pretending to shake an imaginary snow globe in one hand.

Finn says he saw a mermaid.

Mad Martin gasped in surprise, even though this detail was expected.

On the third day he saw her. Swears he did. Swore till the end of all his days. Adrift in the churning water, she was. Laughing like it was all a lively game and nothing more. Screaming with the thrill of it, like the girls on our fairground rides. Her hair was all spun out from her, like a golden veil laid over the water. The pretty breasts of a girl and the tail of a fish. Finn said it was silver and blue and black, her tail, marked like the mackerel. And she saw Finn, fixed him with her eyes, and raised a finger to him, beckoned him to her. And Finn would have gone too. Would have leaped from the boat under her spell, only his own fingers were as cold as cold and he could not unpick the knots in the wet rope that tied him to the rail of the ship. His knife he had left below deck and when he went to retrieve it the madness and the magic was broken and the impatient mermaid was gone.

‘Tell what you found,’ said Mad Martin. ‘Tell about when the storm was over what you found.’

When the storm was gone and the sea lay flat and the air held its breath again, Finn found a silver comb lying on the deck of the ship. It was a gift from that mermaid. Don’t ask how he knew. He just did.

Edwin carefully withdrew something from his pocket. It was wrapped in tissue paper that crinkled as he slowly peeled it open to reveal a small silver comb. It was Mad Martin who saw the gold hairs caught in its teeth, and so he believed in mermaids. Bran smiled and went back to his business.