‘They may reject it,’ Jocelyn warned her. ‘Quite a few predators refuse to touch meat they haven’t killed themselves.’
But these jellyfish had no such inhibitions. Their tentacles explored the torso, then wandered over the fleshy part of the legs. Then they began to settle, spreading themselves gently over the meat like collapsing parachutes — one over a foreleg, a second across the breast, and the third taking the hind-quarters, overlapping each other amicably as they started the process of feeding.
‘They’re not trying to swallow it whole,’ Jocelyn pointed out. ‘We’ll check in a minute what they are doing with it.’
‘How?’ She’d already seen what they could do. ‘Tell me.’
‘Fish it out again.’
‘You can’t be serious?’ Jane was aghast. She felt a shiver of goose-pimples rising over her entire skin at the thought. ‘You must be out of your mind!’
A man’s voice came booming down from the other end of the Nissen hut. ‘Good for you, Jane! I’ve been telling her that for years.’
‘Robin! You’re back!’
‘I’m back,’ he agreed, offering his wife a peck on the cheek and slipping his arm around Jane’s shoulders. ‘No sailing this week, by the look of it. Jellyfish all over the show. Can’t get near the moorings. Like the plagues of Egypt.’
Robin was a tall, bluff man with reddish-brown hair growing down either side of his face to meet his jawline, though thinning on top. A lecturer in poetry at the University and as unlike Jocelyn as it was possible to be.
‘Feeding the buggers, are you?’ He peered into the tank.
‘She will be if she tries fishing that meat out,’ Jane said with feeling. ‘Catch me putting my hand in there!’
‘Meat?’
‘Rabbit,’ Jane told him.
‘Not the rabbit out of the deep freeze?’ He turned on Jocelyn. ‘Bloody hell, I meant that for our supper this evening.’
‘I thought I’d just try it on them,’ Jocelyn explained absent-mindedly, her eyes never leaving the jellyfish as they flopped over the rabbit. ‘They can’t chew or bite, their tissue’s too soft for that, so I imagine they’re probably emitting a fluid of some sort to break down the meat into more easily ingested portions. It’d be worth analysing.’
‘Is that probable?’ Robin asked doubtfully.
‘Oh yes!’ Jocelyn straightened up and used the back of her hand to brush the untidy hair away from her brow. ‘We do it in our stomachs, of course, as part of the process of digestion. And to soften food before we swallow it we often use spittle. But many insects follow a similar procedure. For example, there’s — ’
‘Darling, spare us the gory details,’ Robin said hastily. ‘Thank God I’m a poet, not a scientist.’
‘So what do the poets tell us?’ she teased him fondly.
‘Not much. There’s Keats: With jellies soother than the creamy curd…’
‘Or Shakespeare,’ Jane retorted. ‘Out, vile jelly!’
‘Yes, that’s a damn sight more realistic,’ Robin admitted. ‘Vile jelly — I like that. They’re all the way up the Clifton Gorge, you know. On the mud on both sides. You can see them from the suspension bridge. Someone said they’ve penetrated as far as the centre of Bristol.’
In the tank, the three jellyfish were busy gorging themselves on the rabbit meat. Jane averted her eyes. The very sight of it nauseated her.
‘Oh, I wish we didn’t have to mess about with them!’ she exclaimed with feeling. ‘Why not just kill them and be done with it?’
‘The more we know, the more we’ll understand,’ Jocelyn said crisply. She drew on a pair of surgical rubber gloves. ‘Now, I think it’s time we retrieved that meat, don’t you?’
‘You’re not going to put your hand in there?’ Jane protested anxiously. ‘Oh, Joss, don’t be such an idiot! You don’t know these things. You’ve no idea what they can do.’
‘I’m not quite daft,’ her sister said calmly.
On the bench beside her she laid out an assortment of sawn-off broom handles and wooden spoons, together with a pair of long Victorian fire tongs whose ends had obviously been dipped into some sort of acid to clean them thoroughly.
‘It’s a bit makeshift,’ she admitted, ‘but the best I can manage for the present. If I use one of these as a kind of spatula to ease the jellyfish away…’
Holding the tongs in her right hand and one of the sawn-off handles in her left, Jocelyn leaned over the tank and attempted to prise the jellyfish away from the meat. Whatever fluid they emitted, it had certainly had some effect, for the rabbit’s hind quarters separated from the rest of the torso the moment she touched it. One jellyfish still clung to the leg, but the separation made her job much easier.
‘Divide and rule,’ murmured Robin, picking up the plastic box and holding it ready to receive the meat. ‘Whoops!’
As she brought it to the surface, having apparently dislodged the jellyfish, several tentacles suddenly darted out, fastening themselves on to it again. She tried to shake them off, unsuccessfully, and was forced to scratch them away with the end of the wooden handle.
‘That’s one piece.’ Jocelyn examined it and an expression of satisfaction spread across her face at the sight of the sticky mess on the exposed flesh. ‘As I thought!’
‘It’s like a festering ulcer!’ Jane said in disgust.
‘Darling, leave the box on the bench and use the kidney dish for the next one,’ Jocelyn instructed, turning back to the tank.
‘You want more?’ He pulled a face at Jane; a secret message to let her know he shared her feelings.
‘Oh, yes. I need to take samples to study them properly.’
He found the enamel kidney dish and returned to the tank, holding it low over the surface of the water ready to catch the meat the moment she managed to fish it up. By now, all three jellyfish had arranged themselves around the forelegs and ribcage which was all that remained of the rabbit. Jocelyn had difficulty trying to slip the tongs beneath them, but at last she succeeded. With the sawn-off wooden handle she endeavoured to flick the jellyfish away. Then, unexpectedly, it slipped out of her hand.
Or had they tugged it away from her? Jane bit her lip, wondering.
‘Jane! Hand me one of those wooden spoons! Please!’ Jocelyn said urgently. ‘Any one!’
Jane took the nearest, then watched anxiously as her sister set to work on the jellyfish again. The sawn-off handle bobbed on the water only a few inches away from her fingers. Robin hovered near her with the kidney dish.
‘Here we go!’ In her concentration Jocelyn muttered the words, almost under her breath. ‘Ready!’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Robin swore, reeling back. The agony showed on his face as he grabbed at his right hand.
Jane could not be quite certain how it happened, it was all so quick. As Jocelyn raised what was left of the rabbit, one of the jellyfish drifted towards it again and was astride the tongs when they cleared the water. Simultaneously, she saw a second jellyfish beginning to wrap itself over the floating handle. A tentacle from one of them — Jane didn’t see which — darted out like a spring, lashing across Robin’s hand as he held the kidney dish.
The dish dropped in the water as he started back. Jocelyn, cursing under her breath, was struggling to keep her grip on the meat and at the same time get rid of the jellyfish. Then, irrelevantly, the phone began to ring.
‘Are you all right?’ Jane seized a lab stool and brought it to him. ‘Robin, sit down. Put your arm flat on the bench and let’s take a look at it.’
‘There!’ A note of triumph in Jocelyn’s voice indicated that she’d succeeded in pushing the jellyfish back into the tank and transferring the rabbit meat safely to the plastic box. ‘Are you hurt, darling? It must just have caught you. Let me see.’