The Monster's Wife(87)

It was easier to drift and let the sea carry the boat whichever way it would. In fact, it made her feel calm. There were no sounds except the lapping tongues on the hull, not birds or wind or the bells of other boats. Water swathed her back and sides, pulling her to it. Something floated on it: the small bundle he’d pressed into her hands.

It bobbed on the boat’s inner tide.

She reached out and snagged it with her finger, laying the damp weight on her breast. Her numb fingers worked on the knot, loosing it, folding back leaves of brittle sealskin. The thing inside gleamed golden. The bundle was open and the round face with its flickering pin lay in her palm.

When she turned it one way, the needle bobbed around to the left; the other way round and it chased itself back. It always pointed the same way, halfway between the curlicued N and W. Head South. Right now, she was going North-west. That was what the little machine told her. That was what it was for. She sat up and laid the compass in her lap and picked up the oars, feeling sparks of new vigour in her arms. Pinioning the oars, she began to turn the boat about. It was hard, but with many jabs and twists of the oars, she made the stern face north. Her body and the boat’s smooth lines aligned themselves with the hopeful dart of gold. She set off towards the south and found the oars’ steady rhythm again.

She rowed on through the fog. Sometimes a white point of sun blushed under its mantle, a ghost sun that was almost a moon. The sea’s fine weave roughened into dark pleats stitched with white. The storm swelled and the blank sky rumbled and split.

Rain started, the heavy droplets streaming down her face and between her breasts, filling the boat. The saltiness stung her raw hands until she cried out. She didn’t dare drop the oars, for fear of losing her course. Hunching down lower, bracing her shoulders against the wind, she willed the boat to stay true as the trembling gold pin that could barely be seen.





79


Oona grimaced against the downpour, wanting to sink down and be at rest. Her numb hands tugged at the oars long past the point when she thought she could go no further. They worked until the gale lulled and the cries of gulls pushed through the rain.

She looked over her shoulder and saw what lay behind the fog - a grey shard of beach with black rocks rising jaggedly behind it. May’s heart seemed to pause in that moment of seeing land. Oona’s arms failed.

Her head fell back. She could feel the tide drag the boat through the shallows until it ran aground. Breathing hoarsely, she stared up at rough grass sprouting from the cliff. There was a blue butterfly perched on an orange flower. Another came and they circled each other like tiny moons.

The sun came out and dried the salt onto her lips and cheeks. With a groan, she tumbled from the boat. She was spent and soon fell asleep.

It was evening by the time she woke with a splutter. The sea’s smallest tentacles were nudging her, nuzzling her, edging into her mouth. Coughing hard, she heaved herself onto her knees, her feet. She dragged the boat halfway up the beach before she gave up on it. The compass fitted snugly inside the bodice of her dress, a gold heart to cover May’s with. She pressed her hand to it.

Along the silver strand, the new moon made jewels of sea glass. She smelled smoke and saw where it drifted from a shack tucked up on the brow of the beach where the sea would not come.

Remembering the cries of her friends and family, the pelted stones, she stopped for a moment. It might not be safe to go further, though surely it wouldn’t hurt to see inside. She tiptoed up to the shack, smelling boiled cod, wood smoke, whisky, and peered through the window. Inside, an old man with white hair stirred a pot over a peat fire. She watched his hand move on the spoon, her head full of memories of Granny cooking or building a fire in the croft. She sighed. The man dropped his spoon and turned to the window, cocking his head as if he’d heard her.

She shrank down, afraid to breathe, poised to run if he flung the door open and shouted at her. When he didn’t, she inched back up, pressing her nose to the mossy stones of the shack and peering cautiously at him.

He sat in the same place, his eyes looking at the window without seeming to see her. She stood straighter. Still he stared, eyes wide and pale. He had a clay pipe in his mouth and was absently mumbling the stem. The fire leapt up in the grate and she saw the same milky sheen on his eyes that old dogs got. He turned his ear towards the window.

“Hello?”

Her words came stumblingly. “The storm washed me onto the beach. I’ve no place to shelter.”

He smiled. “Islander?”

“Aye.”

“Come in, lass. There’s room by the fire and it’s warm.”

She walked into the shack, glancing at the battered chairs ranged round the fire, the string of dried mackerel hung from the rafters and the nook bed tucked into the wall.

He gestured to an empty chair, seeming to know where it stood by habit.

She sat, breathing in the smoke of his pipe, the kippered taste of the air. The man dipped a finger into the pot and put it in his mouth, smacking his lips.

“Stew?”

He spooned it onto plates and they sat and ate in silence. Afterwards, he picked up his pipe again and lit it from the fire. Sucking at the clay, he murmured through puffs of smoke almost as if he was speaking to himself. “When I was a sailor I travelled all over the world.”

“What’s it like?”

“The world?” he laughed softly. “Full of all sorts. Some good. Some bad.”