The Surface Breaks(49)

There are servants on their hands and knees in the hall, polishing the wooden floor until it gleams. More servants on ladders, buckets of soapy water in hand as they wash the stained glass windows. To and fro, they dash, carrying huge arrangements of flowers and silver serving trays and cut crystal glasses. Coupe, flute, cocktail, wine, short. I recite their names silently, recalling my lessons with Daisy at the beginning, when I would point to an object and wait until she told me its name. I had so much hope, then, that I would need to know what everything in this world was called.

“Hey, watch it,” a servant says to a girl tracking mud in from outside, wandering into the entrance hall as if amazed to find herself there.

“Sorry,” the girl says listlessly. It is Ling, I realize, the servant girl. I remember Rupert’s hand closing around her arm. She is pale, so thin now that her uniform is at least two sizes too large for her. I shiver. Here is another Rusalka made. Another human woman set on fire by an insatiable man, needing to swallow the sea so she can douse the flames in her heart. She will lament her fate for the next three hundred years. She will sing sailors to their graves for her vengeance. And despite everything that I have been told about the Salkas, despite the fact that they killed my Uncle Manannán and drove my mother into the arms of the Sea King, I would not blame her. We were told to hate them but how else should they have behaved? The Salkas died with tears freezing in their eyes, sobs choked in their throats; their hearts heavy with treachery. Perhaps my grandmother was correct. Perhaps they are to be pitied rather than despised after all.

The orangery has been overtaken by servants too, rubbing silver and shining cutlery. I limp into the drawing room. Eleanor and Oliver are there, and Oliver is drinking wine. Eleanor’s jaw is tight again, but I smile. After all, he likes me because I do not judge him.

“Grace,” Oliver says, his voice loose with drink. “You are looking particularly radiant today. Isn’t Grace stunning, Mother?”

I take a seat opposite Eleanor, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. I watch her closely to see if she will give me any indication that what happened last night was real.

“Morning, Grace,” she says eventually. Her face is serene, no sign of stress or lack of sleep. Did I imagine it all? Was it just a troubled fever dream, a manifestation of this nagging need to know what happened to my mother?

“Would you like something to drink?” Oliver asks, waving a decanter at me. “Get you in the party mood!”

Party?

“Oliver,” Eleanor says, warning him. “Are you sure that this is the best idea?”

“Excuse me, Mother,” he says. “I have decided that we are having a party, therefore we are having a party.”

Eleanor stands, smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. She walks to him, placing a hand on his cheek. She looks so sad, so far from the fierceness she displayed last night (a dream, Gaia, it was clearly a dream) that I cannot reconcile the two women. “Oliver,” she says, and he nestles his hand in her palm. “Oli, my darling. Let me help you.”

“Mummy…” Oliver closes his eyes for a second then pushes her away. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. I’m a grown man and I need to live my life. Grace agrees with me, don’t you, Grace?”

“Grace?” Eleanor says, going to look out at the garden. “What on earth does Grace have to do with any of this? She can’t even speak.”

“Don’t talk about my friend like that,” he says. (Friend? A blow, but I keep smiling. Good girls must always keep smiling.) “You’d like a party, wouldn’t you, Grace?”

He nods as though I have spoken. “So that’s decided. We need to move on, all of us. It will be a year next month since…” He trails off, his mother still with her back to us. A year since the shipwreck. A year since his birthday, and my own. “A party will be a good distraction,” Oliver says. “And we’ll invite everyone in the county.”

“Everyone? Oliver, our friends lost people too that day. Their children. The Guptas lost two. They… they have lost a great deal.”

“And I have not?”

“Losing a child is different, Oliver. You’re too young to understand.”

“Do not tell me what I can and cannot understand, Mother. I need this.” His voice, rising to a whine. Oliver can be so— No. There is no time to criticize Oliver, or to wish that he could be different. He is my destiny. My one hope of survival. “I’m thinking a garden party since the weather has been so good these last few weeks. And then…” Oliver hesitates. “Then, we’re going to move the party on to one of the yachts. It’s not like we don’t have enough of them.” Eleanor’s shoulders visibly tense. “One of Dad’s old ones.”

“Which one?” she asks sharply and I begin to feel nervous without knowing exactly why.

“The Muireann,” Oliver says, that name tripping off his tongue as if it was nothing. “It was Dad’s favourite boat.”

Muireann.

“No,” Eleanor says, the blood draining from her face. “No, Oliver, I forbid it. Any boat but that one. It is cursed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.”

“Oliver. I’m begging you,” Eleanor is so pale now, it is as if she is on her death bed. The Muireann. His father named his favourite boat after my mother. Last night was real, all of it; it must have been – the locked room, full of paintings, Eleanor screaming at me. That room.