The Monster's Wife(36)
Oona shivered in the sour pocket of air under the blanket until it flew off, borne aloft by Granny’s hands. Cold air rushed in.
Oona flailed her arms like an upturned beetle. “Granny! I was sleeping!”
“Oona, the day’s half gone. It’s time to dress for kirk.”
Oona covered her face with her arms. “You bid me stay here in the croft and not go abroad. You said.”
Granny folded the blanket into a crisp square and laid it on a shelf out of Oona’s reach. “Anything to dodge your responsibilities,” she said tartly. “But there’s more folk in the world than yourself to think about, Oona. How will things be with May tomorrow and the next day and years after that if you’re not at her bridecog?”
“You cooped me up here.”
“Well now I’m un-cooping you. Leave that pit of a bed and get to the basin. Your neck is black with dirt. Black.” With a poker she broke the ice plugging the top of the water jug.
Oona dragged herself to the ewer. She knew she had no choice but to do as she was told. Granny stood over her while she washed and brushed her hair and listlessly dragged on her best dress, limbs brittle as icicles. The world was moving too fast. It was changing beyond repair. She only felt the pain of it dully, though: her heart had gone into very a deep sleep.
31
Washed and ironed and laced up tight, the solemn pair passed through the wicket gate. The lime-washed east wall of the kirk was a blank page waiting for the day’s history. Around the wooden door crowded all the people of Quoy. As she and Granny drew nearer, Oona saw that someone had tied white lace ribbons in pretty bows above the lintel and thrown white petals over the threshold.
Inside the dark kirk, light glared from the kerchief-sized window like God’s eye seeing all things. She followed Granny into a middle pew, running her hand along the pocks in the black wood, taking her place on the shallow seat.
In front of her, like bits of flotsam in a storm tide, was everyone she had ever met save for those that were lying in the kirkyard. All in their cleanest, brightest, best Sunday-wear, collected together to be happy for someone else, to make joyful the greatest blessing of her life. Or so they would say if you asked them.
She watched Margaret Umbesetter’s lips open and shut like a trout’s as she gossiped to Janet of Flett who sat next to her. And there was Fiona Moodie, kerchief white as a daisy, poised at her cheek to catch tears as the bride walked down the aisle. And Stuart. She couldn’t help but shiver a little at the chill in her bones when she saw him. He sat straight as an oar in the front pew, braced by his starched collar and stiff new breeks no doubt bought by his mother from Hamnavoe.
Someone shuffled into the pew next to Oona and almost sat down in her lap. He spread his pressed breeks to fill the space between her and possible escape. It made her feel sick to look round, because she already knew it was Andrew and was loathe to meet his eye. He met hers anyhow, his eyes pink - from late night carousing no doubt – and crinkling with mirth at the corners. He elbowed her ribs as if she were a pal of his. Oona slid towards Granny, who cut Andrew dead with a stern stare before turning her eyes to the front.
Hamish Yule stepped into the pulpit and looked over the joyful congregation, his mouth a firm line. His hands rested on his Bible, his fingers caressing a corner edge of the tattered hymnal beneath it as another person might stroke the ear of a cat. She closed her eyes.
An image was there waiting for her, softened from time and frayed at the edges like the hymnal. She lay on her side in Cormick’s shack, fishing under the wooden chest, calling, C’mere gibby. Underneath was a grey cat. Its eyes shone. May came up behind her and shook her shoulders, Oona, we have to go. Now the scene at the big house was before her: May tapping her hand, holding up the hem of her skirt, a hard circle showing through the fabric. She pressed it between her finger and thumb. The markings that told its value were veiled, ambiguous, a cocooned coin, soon to hatch.
She opened her eyes. May was late. Of course she was. It wouldn’t be May if she weren’t late to her own wedding day, but Oona had a feeling that May wouldn’t just be a little bit late today. Something was wrong. The dead men’s fingers chilling her belly told her so. Heavy with the kelp-stench of the vengeful sea, they whispered that May wasn’t coming at all.
32
If May’s wedding had ever taken place, the reading would have told of how Esther married King Ahasuerus, how the great king loved her more than all the women, and she won grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.
May would have thrilled to hear the exotic words warm her bleak island, would have imagined herself an ancient queen wearing silks and commanding the desert. Her dreams of escaping and marrying a real prince and finding wealth, glory, infinite beauty might have ended with Stuart, but through the story, she would see her own wedding painted in the colours of Esther’s life.
She never did come to the kirk that day.
Oona heard it foretold in the first cross coughs that echoed from behind her and the third and the tenth. She heard it murmured like a curse when soft whispers began.
“Where’s the bride? “
“Fussing over her hair most likely.”
“Darning her stocking.”
Most there had risen in darkness to break the ice-lid on the ewer’s cold bone, to dress in stiff clothes unpacked from chests stuffed with camphor and lavender. They had settled old bones, sick bones, fidgety children on hard pews full of the night’s damps. And now the bride was late.