The Monster's Wife(27)

Colours moved in and out of the air like sounds growing louder and softer. Red forte. Blue piano. Yellow sweet as birdsong and birdsong a scent. A hundred birds cawed. Some cried. The soaked sheets were cold, cold.

May held a damp piece of flannel to Oona’s forehead. She spoke calmly, like a mother. “There you are, sweet. All clean now. Clean sheets. Clean you. Be cooler now. Sopping, you were, poor wee hen.”

“Have I lost my wits?”

“No, darling.”

“What ails me then?”

May frowned and wrung out the flannel in a blue basin, wet it again. “What you saw - that’s the laudanum.” Smiling, she pressed the poultice against Oona’s forehead. “That’s what the doctor says.” May’s sad smile stirred new fear in Oona.

“Am I dying?”

May dropped the cloth in the bowl and dragged her sleeve across her face, sniffing. Her hand fell wearily on Oona’s. It was ice cold, but her eyes were eclipsed suns, black circled with red.

“He’s a kind man, Oona. A strange gentleman, but one who intends well. A man of medicine, you know. He listened to your—” Her voice broke.

Oona lay rigid. The world was fruit that ripened too fast. Voices ranted inside her, loud and maddening as sticking your head in a hive. Prick, prick, prick. The truth stung and numbed with the same poison.

“My life is drawing to a close sooner...” Her mouth smiled the words. She wanted to laugh. “My heart.” She’d known it anyway.

May stumbled up and straight away fell to her knees. She pressed her elbows into the bed as if in prayer, half-fell again and buried her head in Oona’s lap, sobbing wretchedly. Part of Oona had always wanted to see her cry like that, to know that she was loved and would be missed.

She tangled her fingers in May’s curls. She was only a shell on the beach, smooth and hollow. She felt hardly anything, except pity.

The next time she woke, it was night. Too thirsty to sleep and too sleepy to move, she turned her back to the window. She refused to look. Her tongue sought out ridges in her mouth’s roof, hard wells in her hind teeth. She tasted coins. Her heart lulled her back, an empty shell swept out to sea.





23


The doctor sat slackly in a red brocade wing chair with his legs sprawled over one arm. Charcoal made soft scratching sounds on the paper that covered his knees. Apart from the ticking of the clock, it was the only noise in the room.

Oona blinked her eyes. They felt dirty. She was so very tired and it was a terrible effort to move or talk, even to think. Sunk deep in the pillows, she heard the thumps and gasps of her heart as if they were waves exploding. He had said she was growing worse. May too.

Closing her eyes, she listened. Lub-dub, lub, lub-dub, lub. She knew her heart was different. Today the silence of its hesitation was piercing, as if it faltered in the stillness. Or perhaps she only thought that because of what they had said.

She opened her eyes. The light hurt. Her hair coiled over the pale tops of her breasts. Stretched straight over the coverlet were her bare arms, their whey skin stippled barley brown. On the end of the bed, her clothes lay laundered and pressed and tiresomely out of reach.

The doctor cleared his throat and set down his charcoal. Frowning, he turned the paper this way and that, craning his neck back as if he were too close to see it. He turned the paper towards her.

Through the fog in her head, the lines and shapes began to make sense. The lips were fuller than she thought of hers as being, bee-stung, the corners pulled down pensively. The pale face framed by soft curls seemed fragile, as if the person in the drawing might fade and vanish away. There was no doubt that it was supposed to be her likeness, though. He had been sketching her portrait all this time. Warmth crept up her neck and into her cheeks. It was a not-unpleasant sensation. Was this what coquetry felt like?

Perhaps even a dying girl could feel such things.

“So strange to look upon flesh that seems young and perfect and imagine what lies beneath. The lungs expanding and contracting, the heart pumping blood.” He looked into her eyes, trying to read her it seemed.

She stared at the wall, blinking away tears that had welled up as suddenly as her vain blush.

“This drawing took moments and yet it will probably last centuries, after those lungs have seized and that heart has stopped.” He stretched out his hand, his fingertips grazing the coverlet near hers.

Crab-like, they scuttled from his.

“Do not you admire my masterpiece?” He ended the question with that nervous laugh and rose to pace before the window.

Oona shrugged. “It’s pretty, but it is not my likeness, Sir.”

“How marvellous that my serving maid happens to be an art critic.”

“I may not be an art critic, Sir, but I know my own face. I am not some fragile flower.” Her eyes flicked back to the wounded creature in the drawing. It was difficult not to be lured into its grey strokes, by what he saw: her brokenness, her weakness. Was that what he found worth looking at?

“It would please me… if you would not call me ‘Sir’, but rather, Victor.”

“As you wish.”

He bent over the edge of the bed. She thought he would look into her eyes or her mouth or make some medical pronouncement. Instead, he smoothed the coverlet and sat beside her. She wished she could hide under the covers again, either that or push him off onto the floor.