Seahorses Are Real by Zillah Bethell Read Free Book Online Page A

the er... Lobster Basket on the corner. You can hear this sea shanty being sung about “The Krarken and how I fought with him!’’’
    â€˜Oh yeah? How does that go then?’
    David sang in a Cornish accent, ridiculous above the sheets.
    â€˜I knew a kra-ken
    And he tried to get me back-en
    I’ll get him back-en
    One of these da-ays.’
    â€˜That’s a fucking good song innit? I’ve never heard such rubbish in me life. Call that a sea shanty?’
    â€˜It’s a shea shanty of a short,’ he chanted.
    â€˜It’s a shea shanty of a short.
    It’s a shea shanty of a short!’
    They collapsed into giggles and he went on as if winding up the story. ‘Then we go back to your door, you see, and in runs Tipperary and in runs Snowdrop; then you turn round and give me a kiss on the chops.’
    â€˜Ah, nice that!’
    â€˜It is nice that. You likes giving me kisses!’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah, I do and I don’t.’
    â€˜Eh? I thought you’d enjoy that bit.’
    â€˜I did enjoy that bit.’
    â€˜Anyway, you go upstairs, put Tippers to bed, give him a kiss and say goodnight little Tippers!’
    â€˜Tippers!’
    â€˜Goodnight little Snowers… give him a pat on the head, then you put your jim-jams on but before you hop into bed you stare out the window, see.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜Stare out the window up at the sky, the perfectly clear sky, looking up at the stars twinkling.’
    â€˜Aaah.’
    â€˜Looking for Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Ursa Middle...’
    â€˜What ones are they then?’
    â€˜Eh? They’re constellations ain’t they, I don’t rightly know do I? I don’t know much about it. Anyway, you’ll be looking up at them, watching their reflections twinkling on the sea.’
    â€˜Lovely that,’ Marly yawned.
    â€˜Then you hop into bed and have nice dreams about fish… and... paintboxes... and…’
    â€˜The kraken?’ she murmured sleepily, turning onto her side.
    â€˜No, not the kraken no,’ David replied, moulding his body round hers and tucking the blanket up high about her long cold neck. ‘He’s a bit frightening.’ And he lay there listening to her drifting peacefully off though his own head, too busy for sleep, sang songs and watched the headlights of cars as they passed like searchlights across the curtains; and waited for the dawn.

Part two: Between Scylla and Charybdis

Five
    Terry lived in a very white house with a very red car parked outside. Too red, Marly always thought, for a spiritual man. The inside was no better: lots of bright clean spaces and thickly, discreetly carpeted floors for souls, no doubt, to lay themselves down and almost, but not quite, bare all. It might have been a cross between a mosque and a tea shop with its strange blend of smells, wails and murmurings from behind closed doors, its spiritual mumbo-jumbo on the walls (Go-with-the-sunshine Dr H cures Mr Kwon’s lumbago with crystals and acupuncture, love and light) redeemed in part by the certificate signed (by some meteorological society), sealed and under glass, of the ‘Terry & June’ star. It twinkled above the rest like a saint bathed in reflected glory and Marly often imagined two stars in twin beds, one of them tall, grey and thin with wide, vitiligoed arms, the other short, fat, rotund with a pink rinse and pearls. Unearthly pearls the colour of amethyst, unearthly pink rinse the colour of candyfloss or coral before it bleaches, before the algae flee it. Or maybe she just ate too many raspberries, being a nutritionist; it was known, after all, that too much beta-carotene turned you orange – like something out of the chocolate factory, Augustus Gloop was it, or Verruca Salt? What you ate had a profound effect, especially in fairy tales: drink me – spinach – fairy-moonface cakes. Eat your greens, it said – above Hello! magazines and