Mermaid back piece in black and grey

The gale took the lamp shutter off the north gallery on Tuesday, so I have been up and down the tower with a spanner and a bad temper since. I am writing this at the kitchen table with the wind still worrying the glass. You will think me soft for what I have to tell you, but Mrs Pargeter from the harbour swears she saw the same thing, and she has never once agreed with me about anything.

It was the morning after the blow. The sea was still heaving grey and brown, full of kelp and broken creels, and I was on the rocks below the tower gathering what the storm had left us. Something turned in the swell perhaps thirty yards out. I took it first for a seal's back, then for a black ribbon of weed, but then the hair came up out of the water and streamed behind it, long as a sail, lifting and falling as though the wind had nothing to do with it. A tail followed, scaled, catching the grey light so each scale showed like a coin. Bubbles rose around her in a crowd and popped at the surface, as if the sea were breathing out.

She did not look at me. She looked at the lighthouse, I am nearly certain of it, the way a woman looks at a window she used to live behind. Then she dropped under, and the bubbles went on climbing for a minute after she had gone, drifting toward the rocks like small lamps.

I have not told the lighthouse board. I have kept the lamp lit each night since, though they say there is no need. Come at Easter and bring your sketchbook. I will show you the place, and if the water is flat enough you may see her too.

Yours ever, Aunt Bridget