The Mermaid Legend It started in a pub and now it's ending in a pub. Starting again, more like it, is what I mean. Funny, really. But that's life, isn't it? Life is a circle that's got a beginning and nobody knows where the circle ends. Da-da-da, da, da! Da-da-da, da, da! I bloody well do, don't I, though? Going round in circles ] am, like one of them goldfish in that aquarium over there. I keep looking at the damned thing. It draws the eye, Cyril says.-Oh yes. That's what it's there for, as a matter of fact. Anything to draw the eye. Why I'm here too. I knew once I bought that black suit with the red blouse and those high heels I'd get the job. Black and white's common, me mum always said. But the blighters can't resist it. Black and red garters go down a treat too. Da- da-da, da, da! I'm singing in the rain, I'm happy again! Like hell Iam. What's that running down the bar then? Ruining me mascara. Here, cheer up. The cup that cheers. Yes sir, what can I get you? Typically nasty weather, what? Tickle my ass with a feather. It was one of them things that never should have happened at all in the first place. But did. Even though 1 knew in me heart and soul from the word go that it weren't going to work. Him and me was just too differ- ent. Not just the old English Irish bit, or the Protestant Catholic bit, or whatever. We were deep down differ- ent, like different species or something. Fish and fowl we were, 169And the awful thing is I knew it from that first night. If he hadn't been so over the top. If I hadn't had one too many. Hell, I'd had one too many often enough before that. I was a woman of experience, I was. So I can't really blame that. But him! God, such a baby! Knocking them back of course like all Irish babies and stripping me naked with his baby eyes. Me blushing. I don't think I'd blushed since I was in nappies, but I was red all over, right down to the top of me bust. Which was showing very nicely thank you in me halter top. Remember those halters? Everyone had one that year, that could get away with it. And lots that couldn't. I know that what got me in the end was the way he talked. Like something out of a bloody Mills and Boon. No, that's wrong. Something out of some folksong, something you'd hear in a trad pub or something. Not a dive like this. ‘T've never seen such a lovely head of hair on any woman!' Then, ‘Will you come for a ramble with me?' Ramble. Not a walk. It had to be a ramble. So of course I fell for it. We rambled up Dawson Street to the Green. In over the railings. I was up to that. The wild side. "You're so courageous,’ he said, taking off the halter neck, 'That's what I love about you.’ Then he nuzzled into my breasts with his long nose and gave me a little nibble. God! I can remember the grass under me, all cold and tickly on me back and the backs of me legs. And him all hot and tickly on top. When I think of it I go to jelly. Still. Better stop thinking of it. The good part. The bad part was marry- ing. "You'll love it in Spiddle.' Blooming hell, I'm from the Potteries. Give us a break! But he wouldn't. Kept it up. ‘You've got to 170marry me!' he'd say in this real insistent voice. Whippin' off me knickers. Red and black. 'I can't live without you.' Even while I was standing on the bloody red and white altar, I could see me leaving in the end. In the old days a man named Eoin Og wns living at Cruachlann. In the depth of winter, when nn other food wea to be had, he was always down on the shore, gathering what he could. One fine sunny day he un west on the shore gather- ing periwinkles between the big rocks. The most beautiful wumun he had ever seen rose up out of the sea near him, came in on a flat rock, threw off her cloak and left it on the rock beside her. Eoin spent a long time watching her and at last she slipped into the sea. In that instant he stretched out his hand, grasped the cloak, pulled it with him and took to his heels for home. Well and good. He knew she would come looking for the cloak for he had often heard talk of women of the sea and. it was said that if they threw off a cloak they could not return without it. She rose up out of the sea again and saw Eoin going off with her cloak, but because she was not as swift on land as in the sea she did not catch up with him before he reached Cruachlann. As soon ea Eoin got home he hid the cloak and so she had to stay with him. She became very fond of him and to make a long story short he had her until two children were born, two girls. I didn't fit in, beginning or end. Not after a year, not after Samantha, not after Sharon. God, it was such a bore out there, nothing but the weather all year long and his bloody old b. of a mother dropping in for her cup of tea and her little spying session. Rattling her rosary beads at me, practically every time she saw me. Although I swear to God that woman never said a 171prayer in her whole life. ‘Sure you're a great hand with the apple tarts, alanna. I don't know how you do it. A real light touch.' Smirk, smirk. Don't bloody alanna me. Alienating the kids too. Why don't you go to Mass, mum? Granny says it's a sin not to go. The fighting with Michael ... never Mick, or Mike ... had been going on from nearly the beginning. Even when we were still getting on he was at it. Late in the pub, never doing a hand's turn in the house, the usual. They were all like that over there. I couldn't get over it. Men dropping out at eleven at night for a nightcap. Dropping in at one or two in the morning. Every bloody night! And the women, except for the old dears with no kids anymore, never going to the pub at all. Never, never, but never. Not that you'd want to really. And I reckon that's why most of them didn't try. But still. Fair's fair. We had one hell of a time, Michael and me. When the girls arrived I tried to tone it down a bit for their sakes. I mean to say, innocent children. Ain't their fault their mum's a crazy English woman and their dad's plain crazy. Or plain Irish, or something. I did try. But it didn't work ... and it affects them, I know it does. The noise and the tension. I remember from me own childhood ... these things do no good. Eoin was always afraid that the children might see the cloak and whenever he had an opportunity he would move it. He had it for a while in the hay-stack and in the corn-stacks and, at last, one day when he wus thatching the house he thought it would be a good hiding place to put it under the thatch. He put it there and thought no living person had seen him, but he was mistaken. It happened that the eldest girl 172watching him putting un the thatch and had seen him hiding the cloak. Next day Eoin went fishing and the children were alone with their mother. They were talking about this and that and at last the girl said: ‘Mammy, you should have seen the pretty thing I saw my father putting under the thatch yesterday when he was thatching!' ‘What kind of thing?’ asked the mother. ‘Oh, the prettiest cloak I ever saw,' said she. ‘Come out with me,’ said the mother, ‘and show me where it is.’ The girl went out with her and showed her where she had seen her father hide the cloak. The ladders he had had for thatching were still lying on the ground and she was able to raise one of them up. She found the cloak and took it and hid it where she could easily get it when the time came. Tt was night when Eoin returned. She made e meal for him and when he wns sitting at the table she slipped out the door and that was the last Eoin saw of her. She took her cloak with her and got to the sm again. Thad to get up and go. Desert the sinking ship. There was no other way. No divorce across the water, of course, and Michael wouldn't have heard of it anyway. When I mentioned the word ‘legal separation’ he nearly hit the roof. So it's divorce Irish style for me: out in the middle of the night when he's asleep and I can get the keys of the car. And over on the mailboat as fast as my legs can carry me. A rat is what I feel like now, all right. Samantha and Sharon. They're just little things really. He'll be all right to them, I know, and even the old bags ... God she's gloating, she must be so thrilled. But she'll do her bit. 173They're her grandchildren, her own flesh, her own hot crazy blood. And she's always been fond of them. Especially Sharon. They'll have her, as well as him. But they're my kids. Poor little half breeds. They're the only kids I've got. Samantha, running a bit fat, big serious Samantha. Remember those days on the beach. She loved her dip. Just like me. God, we'd fun, squealing in the water. And Sharon. My baby. If I let myself think of them even for two minutes I'll go stark raving mad. I never realised it could be so strong. This feeling. I've never felt anything like it, never. I'd give anything to hold them. I'm starving for them. Their hair. Their gorgeous faces. The sound of them having a giggle. If there is a hell this is it. Being without them. Of course that's just what I used to say when I was with Michael too. But there’s no way that I can go back. There's only one thing for it or I'll have lost me job and disgraced meself into the bargain. I'm ringing them as soon as I go off tonight. Yes you are, you're ringing them. At eleven thirty sharp. Michael'll be out if I know him. No risk there. Samantha will be up reading. Sharon might be watch- ing the box or in bed. You're ringing them, do you hear? And they're coming over. For a holiday if noth- ing more. There is such a thing as access, yes sirree, there is. Even in Ireland, that's legal. It must be. A mother can't be kept from her children. So no more thinking and ponying. Worrying gives you nothing except grey airs. Action. You're ringing them at eleven thirty sh: and making a definite arrangement. pa 174Eoin Og never saw her again. But the neighbours used to say that she came back now and again to see the children. She used to rise out of the sm and come back and comb their hair and wash them and see that they were all right. The children saw her, now and again. Yes sir. One pint of bitter coming right up. There we ! Yes, should clear up now, I should think. Red sky at night you know. Sailor's delight I always say myself. Some say shepherd's. I'm a sea girl myself. 175