FIGHTING THE LINE
First published by Peepal Tree Press, April 2020Paperback edition published by Vintage, June 2021Selected by Jeremy Poynting
Winner of the 2021 Costa Book of the Year, the novel’s characters are an unlikely but winning mix: a mermaid, a Rastafarian fisherman, a deaf boy, a Caribbean artist and sweetman, and a white landowner confronting her privilege. Two love stories become entangled and the rivalries and affections in both family and community are brought brilliantly to life. Themes of love, friendship, family and loss, are examined without sentimentality. A mermaid, a “legend drawn from the sea”, returns to land, to survive, heal and live again, as a real woman in modern times, but can transformations ever be permanent? — Jeremy Poynting
“The thing’s about to come up,” shouted the father. “Son of a goddamn bitch is coming up. Keep your rod up!”
The flat dark sea broke open. The mermaid rose up and out of the water, her hair flying like a nest of cables, her arms flung backwards in the jump, her body glistening with scales and her tail flailing, huge and muscular, like that of a creature from the deepest part of the ocean. She beat up and out, arcing through the air so she flipped on her back. The men saw her head, her breasts, her belly, the pubic bone of a woman where
it met the tail of a glistening fish.
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Thomas Clayson.
Nicer crossed himself.
The Black Conch boys gasped.
“Cut de line!” shouted Nicer Country. “Cut de goddamn line.”
All five men were horrified as she hit the water, thrashing. Her mouth was bloody and she’d only just started to fight. On the end of Hank Clayson’s rod was a wild creature, furious
to be caught.
Nicer knew they’d hooked something they shouldn’t have. He jumped down from the flight bridge with his knife. The mermaid, or whatever it was, deserved to stay in the sea. This wasn’t his business at all. The thing looked too big for the boat. It could take the boat down, even.
“Don’t do that,” shouted Thomas Clayson, as Nicer bent to cut the line. “DO NOT do that. She’s worth millions. Millions. We’re bringing her in, goddamn it. We are bringing her in.”
She was on the surface now, thrashing like a mako shark, fighting the line with her arms, coughing up blood and spitting and screaming a high wailing song.
“Oh God,” stammered Hank. “Did you see that?” His hands were shaking on the rod.
The father wanted to take it from him. The Black Conch men, Nicholas and Short Leg, backed away from the stern. Like Nicer, they knew this was wrong. They fraid bad jumbie get ketch. They didn’t want to help. They were lost for words and for what to do. The white men wanted to pull this creature out of the sea. But this fish was half-woman, plain enough. Everyone had heard of the mermen in Black Conch waters, but a merwoman? No. She carried with her bad luck, at best, and her hair had frightened them – like she could kill with just one lash from those tentacles. She could poison them all. They’d seen spikes on her back, dorsal spikes. Scorpion fish spikes. They had seen a bloody, raging woman on the end of the fishing line and now these white men wanted to bring her in. Nah, boy, they all said to themselves.
The mermaid was now under the surface again. The younger Clayson’s face was full of terror and excitement.
“Hold her,” shouted the father.
“What does it look like I’m doing,” the son snapped.
“Keep backing up on it,” Thomas Clayson shouted to Nicer.
Nicer had begun to see dollar signs. If it had been him alone, he would have thrown her back in the sea, but the talk made him realise this could make him enough money for another boat, a new car, a small business of his own. Imagine that. He threw the throttle into reverse and slowed the boat down. The engine hummed. Nicer could feel his own curiosity grow. How much would she fetch? He backed the boat slowly onto the fish. The line had stopped going out. The younger Clayson was lifting and lowering his rod, lifting and lowering and the line was now coming back on to the reel as fast as he could turn the reel handle. The mermaid had gone back under, for now. ◉
Roffey’s novel was inspired by the ancient Taíno legend of the mermaid Aycayia, a story that originated from the Indigenous population of the Caribbean.
The narrative is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Black Conch, which Roffey based on the “northern end of Tobago”, a place where she often spends time writing.