The Monster's Wife(12)

The Laird never came here now. Until the doctor’s arrival, the place had gone years without anyone to grace the table with eight upholstered chairs surrounding it - though only one place was set - or pour their gravy from the gold boat shaped like a galleon that gleamed at the centre.

It was all running to wrack, the mounted stag heads peering from under dust-sheets that were grey and cobwebbed and the mirror at the far end freckled with age. She was surprised it didn’t make May angry to see such waste, given how she scrimped. With a cluck of disgust, Oona crossed the Persian rug, headed for the staircase, taking one last look around Gomorrah. Reflected in the spotted looking glass, the red flag of her hair twitched a warning.

The music began again, its metallic twang twisting around the birdsong, high notes rising above their trilling, hitting a perfect scale of notes like tiny hammers beating copper. Whoever was playing was a master, or mistress, of their art, trained to the highest perfection.

She followed the sounds up the spiral staircase, past red walls patterned with gold roses, up to the hallway where a gallery of long-dead ancestors stared down from their eternal prison pinned to the wooden panelling. Here, she stopped, startled by the light streaming through leaded windows, when all before had been gloomy and cool. The music was louder here, the notes more precise, falling evenly spaced. Harder and far more perfect than Mrs Yule’s companionable piano playing, jarringly so.

The birdsong drove in the opposite direction - wild, lush, furious. She covered her ears to protect them from the overwhelming noise, blinked and finally saw the hallway clearly. Tucked between paintings, on side-tables, stacked each on each, floor to ceiling, were cages of all shapes and sizes lining the length of the hallway. Some were little more than old snares, their wicker mesh white with bird shit. Others were cubes of metal, ruddy with rust and age, stacked prosaically one on the other like lobster pots, while the cages that hung from wires nailed into the panelled ceiling were gilded and ornate. Inside, beneath, between, poked black beaks, yellow beaks, the fearsome curved maws of black-backed gulls. The birds trilled and sang, croaked and squawked, black eyes staring through the bars of their cells.

There were hundreds of them stuffed into the cages, flapping their wings, forlornly singing mating cries which came to nothing, puffing their chests at each other. As the captives screamed and sang, the precise, metallic notes played on and on and on.

Without thinking about it, she opened a cage door. “Come out, sweetheart.”

But the blackbird inside sat unmoving and dumb, head turned to one side.

“Suit yourself then.” She went to next cage, flung open the door. A dead bird lay inside. In the next cage, two doves perched heavily, necks drooping, legs ringed. There was no point freeing them. Their wings were obviously clipped. She spun around seeing everything and nothing. Their shit was everywhere, plastering soft feathers to the gilded walls and polished wooden floor. The smell was sharp and foul, making her eyes smart and her tongue click dryly on the roof of her mouth. She tasted bile again. No doubt remained that what she and May had done the night before had caused the plague of frogs. The washed up hand now stuffed in the coop.

Like someone caught in a nightmare, she walked along the corridor of cages, avoiding the fierce stares of gulls, the soft-eyed wonderment of doves. She couldn’t meet their gaze because they might see inside her and know that she was an accomplice to all this.

At the end of the hallway, to the left of tall double doors, sat a piano. It was much smaller than Annie Yule’s and shaped differently, the bare wood polished to a fine gloss and inlaid with gold. The small wooden teeth moved without the aid of human hands, descending by themselves and rising again. Up and down, up and down in perfect time as if an invisible force hurried the sharp sounds out. It was hypnotic watching the keys jump up and down, and beyond them, through the hinge of the lid, she saw the hammers jump at the keys’ command.

“Why in God’s name are you here?”

May stood at her side, her lips white, face shaking. Oona was shocked at her sudden presence, even more at the icy tone of her voice.

“Did you open that door?” The question was shrill, almost hysterical, as if May was terrified the blackbird might fly out.

She looked to where May pointed. The blackbird perched exactly as he had before, head turned in the same sad way, eye unblinking as if he were stuffed. “His wings are clipped. He’ll always be captive.”

“That makes no odds, Oona. How dare you come bursting in here and start touching things?” Their tryst was forgotten. Her voice, her face, were those of a cold little stranger.

Oona bit her lip. The full horror of all that had happened last night returned to her. Worse still, everything she’d risked today. “You’re a saucebox, May, to censure me when there’s poor birds caged in here that should be free and frogs drifting dead all over the shore and your father kicking up a row. He’ll thrash you next time he lays eyes on you.”

May’s eyes bulged at that last. She frowned and for a moment seemed lost for words. Then she crossed her arms and stood straight, eyes narrowed. “It’s beyond me why you think you can burst in here and preach to me. I can’t help it if you’ve been a baby and prattled to everyone. I knew I shouldn’t have brought you.”

“You pig-headed wretch! Whatever mischief you’re tangled in here is wicked.” She looked at the doorway behind May’s head, wondering what lay beyond it. “Besides, I’ve told no-one. But now I’m in it too. What I found this morning—”