The Monster's Wife(16)

Had it really been a body, or was her mind cozening her? Oona stopped and pressed her hands to her forehead, picturing the long table covered in a sheet and the instruments laid out beside it. That tangled seaweed - hair. Those scalloped hills - feet. And the soft undulations - hips, belly, breasts.

A woman.

In the vampire moonlight that sucked the colour from everything, her imagination took on a dark cast. She saw not just a table and tools, but a winding sheet, butchers’ knives.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she winnowed her memories, searching out some bright certainty. The kitchen had been comforting enough, with its familiar smells and food and pots. The gallery full of great ancestors would not have been so sinister without the caged birds and the strange improvements Frankenstein had made to the music room could be seen as no more than a symptom of eccentricity. When she tried to conjure the doctor, however, all she found were fear and fury at the way he’d put May in danger and suspicion of what he had planned.

She watched her pale feet move along the dirt road. Grey grass tickled the curved space between her big toe and its bedfellow. Her feet could walk and run and swing from a tree over the burn or wade in the sea, the salt stinging them. But the ones in Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory were mere meat, cold as the hand washed up on the shore, still as a rock beside the throbbing life of the doctor’s menagerie.

She had to know more.

A few paces from the gate of the croft, rain caught her, hard and fierce. The thick drumming on the earth’s lid said dead hand, dead feet, dead girl. It could be you on that table. Swollen mud suckled at her feet and her clothes tugged her down. She was weak as a beached jellyfish, falling into the cottage and letting the door blow shut behind her. The noise of it flustered the chickens perching on a beam over the hearth. Ruffled and ungainly, they fussed on their night perch, blundering against each other, claws knitting and purling the beam.

The fire had turned to embers under the blackened kettle. The candle guttered on the shelf, lighting the gold-lettered backs of the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress and Night Thoughts. After Oona’s parents died, Granny had made a special effort to teach her letters, dragging her to the Manse often so that she could pore over the beautiful, old books in Hamish Yule’s library and ask him her many questions about the world and its history and listen patiently to his long-winded answers. Most folk on the island respected Granny for her wisdom, but others complained that she spoke like she had puffin eggs in her mouth. They thought Oona did too.

The wicker chair was turned towards the fire, its hooped back facing the door and hiding its occupant from Oona. Rain dropped off the freckled tip of her nose and ran in rivulets over her collarbone, down her arms and legs to the floor where it pooled on the flags. She felt like a spirit visitant returning to watch over the living, out of step with the world, little more than an observer. Was this how the dead girl felt, wandering in some limbo?

Orpheus flopped down from his roost to peck at barley husks around Oona’s feet. She was glad of his gold eye watching her and his handsome plume bobbing. Vain bird, he was, but he loved her and was waiting for her to strip off her wet things and dry her hair and pull out the drawer that held her bed so he could settle himself in the warm hollow of her belly. Most nights they slept soundly in each others’ blood heat as she and May had slept when they were young girls and May begged her parents to let her share Oona’s bed.

Wicker scraped stone. Oona’s jaw closed uncomfortably tight, the top and bottom teeth chafing each other. The chair turned and Granny’s shadow grew long against the fireplace, her stiff limbs poking clumsily forth like a hermit crab opening the shutters of his shell house, revealing his secret hiding place. Toby leapt down from her lap to yawn and stretch. Granny glared at the burned-down fire, still stupid with sleep, then turned her glazed eyes on the spectre in her doorway.

“Where’ve you been, child?”

Oona shrugged, wiped the drips of rain from her eyelids. “Out.” She knew that long explanations would annoy Granny worse than her absence, and lies were no good. Granny had a sixth sense for lies.

The old woman dropped her shawl and marched over to the door. Her hand caught Oona a clip round the ear. Oona reeled back, her hand grabbing the rough stone behind her to hold herself steady. “What-” Bells peeled in her ear, cacophonous.

“Leave kirk, will you, in the middle of a meeting? No word to me, no excuse to the Minister. Is that what I brought you up for, to shame me?” She raised her hand again, lips white, cheeks quivering. Oona shrank against the wall. If it had been anyone else she would have hit them back. But Granny’s anger was more terrifying than any and besides, she could never raise a hand to her.

“Granny I’m sorry.” She bit her lip. Needles pricked the backs of her eyes. She forced the tears back, trying to be braver than she felt with the whole day, whole week, whole summer rushing in on her in messy fury. Her legs shuddered. She jabbed her fingers into them.

Granny’s eyes followed the movement of her hands. Dull recognition flitted behind her eyes. The dying girl. She shrank into herself with a sigh. “Oh dear. Come here Toby, come on and give Granny a kiss.”

The little dog’s ears pricked up and he padded over, stretched and yawned, following her to her chair. She fell towards it, slow and hunched, looking her age again now the anger had left her. Toby jumped onto her lap and she buried her face in his rough fur.