Mermaid

by JunoMagic
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-ShareAlike license

Mermaid

‘I’ve had my desert years,’ Murphy Keegan says.

The old man sits very straight on the narrow bench of the boat. Age has wasted away the muscles that once gave his tall frame grace and strength. Now he is rail-thin. His hands curl cramped and clumsy around the oars, long fingers gnarled, knuckles swollen. Like all old sailors he suffers from arthritis and rheumatism.

His wife, Temair Muirenn-Keegan gently lays her hand on his. Drops of water glitter on skin that shimmers like mother-of-pearl. A golden wedding band gleams in the sunlight. She clings to the rim of the boat, swaying with the surf. She looks young, young enough to be his granddaughter, and more beautiful than a fairy-tale with her turquoise eyes and inky-black hair. Merpeople do not age like humans do.

It is a sweet morning here, close to the shores of Fuerteventura. The air is soft, the sea gentle. This is the last interview that Murphy Keegan, the famous marine archaeologist, and his mermaid-wife will give. I am Sherrilyn Gallagher, and I am happy and grateful that I am privileged to be the one to talk to them today, and to pass their words on to our readers.

‘”My Desert Years” is also a chapter title in your autobiography. What does that mean for and your life?’ I ask, and keep the digital recorder as low as I dare. Recording is tricky near the water and I hope that the microphone will catch every nuance of his answers.

Keegan looks down at his wife. His hair is kept bristle-short. With his piercing, silver-blue eyes and his attractive, weathered face, I feel reminded of Clint Eastwood.

For a moment, he moves his lips in silence, a wordless message just for his wife. She pulls herself a little higher out of the water, and I glimpse a hint of her tail, blue-grey-green, a flash of silver, a swish and swirl of scales below the surface of the waves. Temair grasps his fingers, lays her cheek against the back of his hand. The veins under his wrinkled skin stand out, a pale green-blue, remarkably similar to her eye-colour.

‘I literally spent three years in the desert,’ Keegan explains. ‘After our first daughter died. She survived only for a few hours, because her lungs could not cope with the amount of oxygen sucked in through her blowholes.’

Temair closes her eyes. I cannot tell if the drops that sparkle on her cheeks are tears or sea-water.

‘I am so sorry,’ I say.

The loss of a child is always a tragedy, but this child’s death, even though she died more than fifty years ago, will always be special heartbreak. The first child born of a man and a mermaid since the mythical case Hans-Christian Andersen’s distorted in his fairy tale. ‘She died because she had human lungs, but at the same time the respiratory system of a mermaid, which resembles that of a dolphin, is that right?’

Keegan nods. ‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Mermaids breathe like dolphins. Through blowholes, which are situated behind their ears. Merpeople exchange around 80% of the air in their lungs, a human being only around 17%. Áine’s lungs couldn’t withstand that stress.’

‘After her death, you left the sea?’

Again, he nods. ‘I couldn’t stand the sight of the ocean anymore, of water – water that had produced and killed a child as beautiful as Áine.’ He sighs. ‘It was the worst time in my life. Up until then, my relationship with Temair was … very much like a fairy-tale. Unfortunately I had forgotten that no legend about the love between a merperson and a man has ever ended happily so far.’

‘It was easy to forget in those days,’ Temair says, releasing his hand. With one hand on the rim of the boat, she floats easily alongside us. ‘We were young and in love. Murphy was so handsome and strong, an accomplished scuba- and apnoea-diver.’

‘At that time, my record was six minutes – quite something, if you take into account that even Temair here cannot stay underwater without breathing longer than twenty minutes.’

‘His absolute record was twelve minutes.’ Temair smiled. ‘We had just celebrated the first successful submarine excavations of the capital city of Atlantis. Then I discovered that I was pregnant. I was overjoyed, even if my parents were not. We got married …’

‘And your wedding was the sensation of the century,’ I put in. ‘It received even more media-attention than the wedding of the Princess Diana.’

Keegan scowls, but Temair keeps smiling, a misty expression in her eyes. ‘It was the most wonderful day of my life. And when my pregnancy proceeded without any problems, we thought we would simply be happy for the rest of our lives.’

‘But then your daughter died,’ I whisper.

Temair let go off the boat, submerging for a moment, her long hair fanning out like black sea-grass around her.

‘Yes,’ Keegan says, his eyes never leaving his wife. ‘The harshest reality check imaginable.’

‘And you left your wife.’

‘For three years.’ He pauses, inhales deeply. ‘It was at once the worst and the best thing I could have done. Cowardly, of course. Hateful, too. But … necessary, for both of us. You see, we had begun to ignore who we are. We had started to overlook the fact that we do belong to two very different worlds.’

Temair swims back to the boat. With her acute sense of hearing she hasn’t missed a word.  ‘You can only build a bridge if you know that you need one,’ she says. ‘And we didn’t. Not until it was almost too late.’

‘Why did you return?’ I ask Keegan.

‘There is not much call for a marine archaeologist in the Sahara,’ Keegan says dryly. ‘And eventually I realised that I could never stop loving Temair.’

He reaches out toward her, with his left hand, an awkward gesture, around the oar, and she grasps his hand again, very gently. Judging from how slowly he moves, even that small gesture must be very painful for him.

‘And you, Mrs Muirenn-Keegan?’

‘I will always wait for him,’ she replies simply. Temair Muirenn-Keegan is one-hundred-and-thirteen years old now. Merpeople have been known to live up to nearly two centuries. ‘That is the way of my people. To bind ourselves only once, and for our whole life. Not just out of biological instinct, but out of tradition, and out of choice.’

What she means is the biological background of all the sad fairy-tales about mermaids and mermen: once their choice of a mate is made, it is made forever, unto their deaths. It is a form of imprinting that marine biologists still cannot completely explain.

‘And since then?’

‘I’ve never been away from the sea for longer than six weeks,’ Keegan squeezes his wife’s hand. ‘And those six weeks were only because I had to undergo surgery a few years ago. Apart from that we’ve always been together. For fifty-three years now.’

‘You have three surviving children, eleven grand-children and two great-grandchildren now, I believe?’

Temair’s smile widens, she nods enthusiastically. Then she reaches for the broad diver’s belt she wears around her waist. ‘I have the latest pictures with me, if you want to take a look?’

Of course I want – the Keegan children are nearly as famous as their parents. Two live on land, one is almost fully merperson. I know that two more children were stillborn. Of the grandchildren three belong to the sea. The pictures are amazing. They are graceful like dolphins, two young men and a woman. Of course I know Líra. Everyone does. She is currently filming a remake of the Andersen tale in New Zealand. Rumour has it that she will surely be nominated for an Oscar. The great-grandchildren seem completely human, though. I admire the pictures, and I am incredibly grateful and happy to present them to our readers here, on the two pages following this interview.

‘You rarely give interviews,’ I say after I have handed back the pictures. ‘Why this one? Now? And why here?’

It is obviously difficult for Keegan to get around, and this little boat trip is visibly exhausting him.

Temair speaks first. ‘My husband has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We need to make the most of the time we have left. And here – floating above the lost kingdom of Atlantis – is where he asked me to marry him. When he came back to me from the desert, we came here to renew our vows.’

‘The doctors give me a few months if I’m lucky, and I doubt I’ll be able to return here under my own power,’ Keegan says. ‘Apart from that, I wanted to tell my story the way it should be told. At least once.’ His voice rasps with weariness. ‘The mistakes, the grief, the joy.’

He gazes down at Temair, and his eyes shine with love, warm as the sunshine that sparkles on the waves.

‘Love comes in many forms, Miss Gallagher,’ Keegan says softly, without looking at me. ‘And love always has to overcome obstacles and hurdles. Of age, race, religion, class.’

Carefully, he secures the oars, so he can reach for his wife with both hands. As she clings to his hands, floating in the peaceful ocean, he adds, ‘Although it is not easy, now, at the end of my life, I know that it is possible to overcome those problems – and more.’

He grins at his wife, a surprisingly boyish smile. I feel reminded of the pictures I’ve seen of Keegan as a young man. Dashing – and he is still incredibly charming. I can understand why Temair fell in love with him.

Temair kisses his hands, and Murphy Keegan concludes our interview: ‘I want our children, our grand-children, and our great-grandchildren to know without any doubt that there is at least one love-story between a man and a mermaid that had a happy ending.’

Song of the day:

Link(s) of the day:

Underwater photography by Jolene Monheim at Flickr | Mermaid history | “The Mermaid” by Heinz Insu Fenkl at Endicott Studio, Journal of Mythic Arts

…and my wish for you today is:

Do not forget how different we all are; build bridges between you and me; make the impossible possible.

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