The Monster's Wife(42)

“I last clapped eyes on you two years ago, lass, for you came here to look at my kittens. Boots recollects it.” He looked down at the cat that groomed between its splayed legs. “Do you not, Boots?”

She looked away from him, squinting at light that framed the curtain. Ten years. Boots could be the same cat she’d found on the rocks that day, the one May had warned her not to pick up. She remembered cradling the grey thistledown to her chest, May uncurling her fingers and the cat jumping free. She remembered following the kitten towards the tumbledown shack that was forbidden them. Stroking the kittens while May stayed in the bedroom for the longest time.

“You did May a mischief when we were bairns. I know that now.” The words fell dully from her, as much a confession as an accusation.

“You’re pale and wan, lass. Fancy a drop – warm your heart?”

It was painful to continue, but she must. “Did you hurt her again?”

He grinned. “Hard to get warm here. Had a nice, healthy lass in the old days and then I was warm as pish.” He dug around under the table and surfaced clutching a jug.

She stepped closer, near enough now to smell the stench of whisky and reel from it. “She asked to be freed from her troubles, so you gave her passage in the Elver but she skimped on the fare. Did you demand that she pay a different way? Did she anger you when she said no?”

May, small May, had spent her life looking at men as if she might do what they wanted if they only gave her what she desired. This would not be the first time she’d fallen foul of it. The vision Oona had conjured was fearful and all too believable. She closed her eyes, trying to will it away.

“Prating on, I don’t ken what...” Cormick turned the jug upside down and shook it. “Naught but cobwebs… so long I’ve forgot the taste.” He licked his lips.

Oona’s temples throbbed. She wanted to pick up the knife and press it to his throat. “May showed me the coin she’d put by for you!”

“Had no coin for a very long time and tasted not one goddamn drop.” Cormick scratched his chest. “It gets ugsome. Sometimes if I can’t find a sup, I lay my head down. Warm as guts in my bed, so it is.”

Telling him he was a liar seemed pointless. Perhaps if she appealed to whatever small spark of fellow feeling was left in him. “Imagine her out there alone, Master Cormick. We must find her and go to her aid.”

Cormick reached in his pocket and brought out a twist of paper. He undid it and took out a pinch of tobacco and tamped it in his pipe.

Oona’s head spun from the rotgut smell, but she kept on, her voice imitating the shaming tones she heard so often from Granny. “You meant well, I’m certain. I’ll wager you rowed her halfway before it grew dark.”

His face turned the colour of liver and his eyes narrowed. “Her and her and her and her and her and her and her and fecking her.”

She felt a surge of pleasure at having hit the mark, whatever that mark might be. Pressing her advantage, she bent her face near his, whispering. “You took a liking to her when she was still a wee lass, her manner of walking, her lips and her hair, her way of looking into your eyes as if she might make you a gift of the world. Her soft skin. And you so lonely.”

Cormick pushed her away. She fell against the table. He lurched at her, grabbing her arms, shaking his head from side to side, slapping his lips.

His voice was shrill. “Perhaps she tired of you fancying yourself so canny. She wished to be left. It’s good to bring home what the sea gives and cook your meat and eat it and take a sup now and then, but when you do, they say you sup too much and if you like someone, they say you like them too much and you touch them too much. Is it any wonder?”

His face was red. He pressed it into hers. The fish knife pushed into her belly, a short jab, just enough to hurt without cutting.

She ripped herself free from him, spun around and ran from the shack, past the midden where the gulls lunged at herring guts and the green crabs shuffled by like drunks.

Clambering onto the boulders, she breathed hard. It began to rain, slicking the places where her hands gripped. On top of the last rock she bent double. It felt like she was being stabbed in the back. She slid down and landed on her tailbone, fell forward palm down, face pressed into the earth.





37


Oona lay listening to her heart and tasting the sweetness of crushed clover. She pushed her face into the small white buds and closed her eyes. Her heart was a poppy and the wind was tearing at its petals. She counted the beats – one, two, three, and the fourth, the dull string on a fiddle, the squeaking wheel on a cart.

Hands could fix carts and fiddles, but there were no hands clever enough to mend the fourth beat of a heart and hers was weakening by the day. Ever since May went, it was growing worse. She could almost feel the long sleep coming on, her tired bones falling under the hill and bleaching. She must find May before that day came.

She rose to her knees and dragged herself home, light-headed and heavy-boned, a cruel thought grating away inside: she’d paid too little mind to May. How else could she have let her come and go to Cormick’s when the man was spitting mad?

She pressed her hand to the place where the knife had dug in, hearing his vile words and feeling his hate. He’d had plenty of time to use his knife that way on May and worse. Oona had been too busy hunting shadows at the big house and flirting with the doctor to watch her. She had let her keep secrets and now she might never know what they were.