The Monster's Wife(4)

May shrugged. “I don’t know what they are. All he said was ‘throw ‘em in the sea’.”

“Who said?”

May cast her a heavy look. “Frankenstein.”

In Oona’s mind’s eye was the man her fancy had painted, his silhouetted figure pacing the gallery of the big house, lamp held high. Settling to a medical book for a while, turning the pages impatiently before throwing it down to stare out of the window. Tall and aquiline of nose, with that slimness of throat and wrists only mysterious foreign aristocrats possess, he seemed to her a dark prince travelling under a curse.

“Is he in hot water?”

May frowned. “Not if we shift these crates.”

“Is it the French?”

“God knows, perhaps someone is hounding him.” The wind whipped up her hair. The lightning cracked again. “Help me?”

With a weary groan, Oona jammed her hands under the crate. May took the other side and lifted. The boat rocked beneath them, sickeningly hard. They hefted the crate between them and heaved it over the side. It hit the water’s rough silk with a crash, spraying their lips and eyes. Oona mopped her face with a sleeve that had grown a stinging pall of ice. The boat pitched. May grabbed her arm and pulled her close.

“Ow.” Oona snatched her arm back, chafing the hurt with stupid fingers that hardly felt.

“You almost went overboard. The storm’s roughening.” May nodded at the next crate, shoved her hands under it. “D’you have it?”

They hauled it up and slung it far as they could, and the next after that. Every one splashed hard and sunk deep, leaving a gob of cuckoo-spit in its wake. With each crate, Oona thought of the pranks they’d played, the hidings they’d had in all their years of friendship. She’d thought it was over, that soon-to-be-married May was too prim and ladylike to come be a tomboy with her. She looked at May over the swing of a fetid crate, the way the glare of the moonlight caught her high, pinched cheekbones. Her eyes, narrowed to slits, seemed utterly black. Her arms worked fast, filled with demon energy. Her brows, drawn into each other, were arched, wicked, wrinkling the flesh of her nose and forehead like a dog’s growling snout. When they tossed the last crate, May’s lips flew open and the top one snagged on a sharp eye tooth. She was as fierce as ever and twice as wild.

Silver bubbles broke the blackness below them. The moon threw shards of their reflections around the froth. It looked like they’d been smashed, that the crate had hit and broken them and now their fragments bled together in the water, a shimmering whole, as deceitful as any undertow. Wicked girls. The stench of what they’d done still thickened the air. Oona had grown accustomed to it and could now name the component scents: chamber-lye, mingling with putrid offal. A pail of rank slops left in the sun.

Out where the sky hung low, a soundless fist of whiteness struck, bleached it to ash and lime and left a blood tinge to the world. Then the low brrrr of a drum, sea spirits belting heavy barrels towards the clouds. The world blurred. Surely she’d been dreaming this whole night. They sat. Without a word, they turned the boat about and pushed the oars down hard. The rhythm was hypnotic, inevitable, like the push and pull between May and Oona, the flush of nearness – stifling. The ache of running away.

Oona was so cold that the raindrops warmed her. She looked over her shoulder. Hoy was tall, peaked, an old volcano sleeping. Above it, a hole gaped in the storm clouds like shocked lips parting. As they neared the shore, she could see that no rain fell on the island. Dark lashes of grass fringed the ragged cliffs. The crescent beach was licked over with silver. Her neck ached. She turned back. May’s mouth moved in silhouette, but the squall was too loud to hear what she said. And besides, Oona was too tired to listen. The water softened, lightened, the sand underneath shining through it. May stood and jumped down. Oona followed and they guided the boat back into its sandy womb.

“Whossere?” The voice above their heads was gritty with hate.

They crouched low. A scarecrow teetered on the brink of the noust, face black against the moonlight.





4


“Traitors!” A loud trickle broke the words, chopped them into mad tees and buzzing esses. Pish streamed down the bank and the hot spray spurted everywhere. The last dribbles were pursued by an earsplitting fart. “Infernal frogs. Stinking cut throats.” Cormick lingered for a moment more, weaving side to side in such an extravagant manner, Oona fancied he would tumble into the noust with them. With a hail of soft curses and farting once more, he reeled off into the night.

Oona let out a breath. “Did he spy us?”

“See how soused he was? Grog’s not known for making you see in the dark.” May scrabbled up the bank, avoiding the furrow made by Cormick’s water.

“He saw, I swear it, and he keeps knives in there.” Night-blind, Oona felt for the grooves May’s hands had left in the sandy mud and sunk her fingers into the melting earth. Grit nudged under her nails and lodged there. Her eyes came level with the laces of May’s boots.

“He keeps fish hooks and oyster knives. Don’t be so green.” May’s rough-skinned hands closed round Oona’s wrists. The skin burned as May dug her heels into the bank and pulled hard.

“You mind me of an ant with a cobnut on its back,” Oona laughed. “Just like you to think you could lift me, when I’m taller by a head.”