The Monster's Wife(64)

“Do you mean the doctor from the big house? Was he here?”

Cormick swallowed a mouthful and nodded. “I’ll tell you something.” He picked up his knife and held it between his hands, pressing the point into his finger. “Because you said that you’re dying.” Their eyes met. “I am too. Come sit before you fall over.”

Oona slowly got up and moved across the room to him, her eyes on the knife in his hands, and yet not caring somehow. She sat, thinking of May with her lost face and the coin sewn in her skirt hem.

“Did you give her passage to Hamnavoe?”

He shook his head and took another drink. “She gave me coin for her fare, said she needed to go quick. Sun was sinking, mind. We had to wait for him first, though, that was coming with her.”

Wait for him. The charcoal sketch of the naked woman on the table flickered in front of Oona’s eyes. The doctor might be betrothed, but it hadn’t stopped him from kissing Oona. Maybe Stuart was right about May’s betrayal.

“She was waiting for Victor.”

Cormick shrugged. “She never would say. We stood and the clouds drew down some and I said, it’s a foul night lass. But she…she wanted to wait and wait and wait and wait. I came in here so thirsty and when I got back to the beach she was laid there…”

Oona pressed her hands to her eyes. “No.”

“Blood all over and him stood over her.”

“Oh God. May.” She rubbed her fingers over the raw, bruised flesh of her face. “No.”

“Said I could keep the coin, buy myself a whole crate of whisky, long as I didn’t tell what I saw him do to his wee wifey. Told me to put her in the boat, row row row her out into the bay. Broke the hull. Folk’d think she drowned. Left me to it. I couldn’t. Just sat there. Held her bonny head. Watched her breathe. There was blood in her hair and I couldn’t—”

“Watched her breathe?” The words were like Victor’s machine, its small sparks bringing life. Oona dropped her hands and looked into Cormick’s face, afraid to ask for more.

He took a long drink. “That doctor came down.”

The spark flashed into lightning. “May was waiting for him.”

Cormick stared at his hands as if he could still see blood on them. “Remember when you came to look at the kittens? Boots remembers it.”

She took hold of his arm. “What did the doctor do?”

“Gave me coins, so many coins. Shinier than Stuart’s. Said take the Elver out into the bay and scupper it, just like Stuart said. Lifted May up, said he’d help her. I did what he said. I took my boat out and I broke her.” He put his face in his hands and his shoulders shook. “She was so bonny.”

Cogs whirred, filling her flesh with new life. “Did the doctor take her to the big house?” This was why Victor had pushed her towards Cormick, so she would find out the good he had done.

“She loved those kittens and I loved her.” His eyes were soft.

For the first time Oona was certain what had happened that day with the kittens, how Cormick had ruined May. He knew it, too, that what he’d done had come to this. She pressed her hand to her mouth and ran out.

On the beach, the crabs came, their stiff bodies inching sidelong over rocks like bloody hair. Their mouths frothed bubbles. Small crab shrieks she couldn’t hear. She ran through the midden, crunching shells underfoot and for once, not caring if she stepped on living things. Somewhere along this stretch of bleak rock, May had lain, only just alive. The gulls had circled over her, crying hungrily at the scent of her hurt. Oona couldn’t look or think about where it had been, or how Stuart had done it. Or why Victor hadn’t told her directly what he had done, why she felt certain she shouldn’t ask.

She reeled into the boulders blindly, hands and feet slipping on slimy strands. Her back ached and she felt the salt chill of night drawing in. On the last boulder, she stopped and looked up at the cliff top where the big house crouched, hiding everything she loved most in life, taking her world for itself.





56


Oona crept through the kitchen door, cocking her head and listening. In the hallway she was glad of the clock’s ticking, stepping in time with its metal teeth so that she might go stealthily up the stairs. Around her wrist hung the bracelet of keys. She clutched them in her sweaty palm to stop their tongues. If she and Victor could not speak honestly to each other, she must to find the truth another way.

On the upstairs landing, she stopped and looked along the hallway. It went in two directions – the gallery of birds and the master bedroom. Glancing towards the music room, she saw no sign of Victor and heard none either. His door was closed. He would be twisting wires together in there, stitching flesh. The guest wing might have been her first guess as to where May was hidden away, or the oubliette or the attic, but she’d cleaned them all top to bottom and there was no nook, however small, she hadn’t peeked inside. That left the room next to the master suite. As soon as she took a step towards its door, she remembered hearing a noise coming from it the other day, the way she couldn’t open it. It was the room he’d said didn’t need cleaning. There must be a reason for that.

Oona tiptoed up to the door and pressed her ear to it, listening with every grain of her being. All she heard was the tide ebbing inside her. The pot bubbled no more. She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of May in her bloody dress, May waking, trapped and afraid, the woman in Victor’s drawings, the hand on the shore, the hare pinned to the board.