Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  I suppress a tight smile. ‘Well you know how it is, Henry. Publisher’s deadlines and so on. I expect I’ve been a little short with him recently. My head is full of my work in progress.’

  I press the phone closer to my ear. I hear him grunting in agreement, swallowing loudly – no doubt swigging a little afternoon brightener. ‘Of course, my dear woman. We all get a bit tetchy at times, but if you have any concerns, any concerns at all, don’t hesitate to –’

  ‘And how are you, Henry? How’s the golf?’

  ‘Oh, still playing a round, you know!’ He gives a leery laugh.

  ‘And how’s Kitty? I hear she’s been made president of the Horticultural Society. Bad business about the treasurer. I always suspected he took too many holidays.’

  ‘Oh, a bad business.’ He clears his throat again, takes another gulp of his firewater. ‘Pleased to hear you’re keeping abreast of things, though. Jolly good.’

  We wrap up the conversation and I drop the phone back into its cradle. Arthur and the doctor are obviously in cahoots. How dare they check up on me? Imply that I’m not the full shilling? Damn cheek.

  I let myself out of the front door. I need to find Lucie. I hope Bella won’t follow me. She’s really getting on my nerves.

  Lucie

  I test the iron gate with both hands, as if I’m an inmate trying to escape. It won’t budge, but flakes of rust fall like dandruff into the swiftly moving current. Floss whines impatiently. I peer into the darkness. I can just make out the barrel vault of the stone ceiling before it peters out into solid darkness. There is no light at the end of this particular tunnel. The air smells rank and earthy and I’m quite glad the gate’s locked.

  ‘Looking for something, dear?’

  The unexpectedness of Mac’s voice makes me reel back in surprise. She’s directly above me, leaning on the parapet, looking down as I had done just thirty minutes before. The odd, steep angle alters her appearance. She looks unfamiliar, her face half in shadow. Puffier, older, darker. Her hands blend with the stone, become part of it. Gargoyle claws. My heart, already alarmed, starts up a steady bass thump.

  I back up a few steps, the water welling around my boots, threatening to tip me off balance. Floss deserts me, scrambling up the steep bank and flattening herself like a cat as she melts into the undergrowth. I can hear the angry chirruping of a bird downstream, but other than that, silence stretches out between us.

  ‘Floss has been barking at the wheelhouse, so I just thought I’d have a look for the inspection tunnel.’

  Mac smiles, and the shadows creep up to her eyes. ‘Just rats, dear. Just rats. They nest under the wheel. I have to put down poison. Such a damn nuisance.’

  I retreat further. Mac has the height advantage and I don’t like it. I feel intimidated. ‘Do you want to have a look?’ she offers. ‘I can fetch the key?’

  The dense black of the tunnel yawns in front of me. I’ve had enough of the cold, swirling water. I need to get out. I shake my head, begin to retreat. ‘Another time, maybe.’

  That night I hear the now familiar crying. Half asleep, I creep through the silent house and let the little dog in. She bolts into my bedroom and burrows into my back as soon as I lie down. She stinks of river water and nettles, but I’m too exhausted to care. I wrap the duvet round us both and eventually her soft doggy snores kick in. Her entire body twitches from time to time, and I can’t decide whether she’s chasing dream rats or trembling.

  ‘There’s something going on with your mother.’

  Arthur lifts his gin and tonic. The cardboard mat sticks to the bottom of the glass, and I peel it off, mopping at the scarred tabletop with a serviette. I pick up my own glass of soda water; the ice chinks and the slice of lime pops up to the surface like an exotic fish.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a wine?’ asks Arthur, wiping his mouth.

  ‘Too much to do.’ I’m already rooting through my bag, hauling out jotters and sheaves of paper and piling them onto the dry bits of the table. ‘I don’t even know where to start. She’s talking to herself. Her study is a mess, and she’s been writing the story in different books and stuff. This is her original notebook.’ I hold up the black hardback. It’s dusty and dog-eared. ‘This is what I’ve been working with. It contains all the folk tales that she wants to include in her new book, but halfway through “The Cruel Sister”, she’s suddenly gone off on a tangent. It’s like the story got away from her. Look . . .’

  I pick up an exercise book and open it. Mac’s scribbles disappear off the page. Arthur takes it from me and reads.

  ‘“The yard is dark. The cloaked figure is some way off, and by the light of a full moon” – Jesus, there’s always a full moon – “Bella can see the tracks that he has made in the dirt. She follows the trail of the stranger’s boots in the earth, thinking about the jute sack, wondering what’s in it. She looks at the footprints without seeing the very thing that should have sent her running back into the hall . . .”’

  There the writing peters out. Arthur glances up. ‘What? What is she not seeing?’

  I choose another notebook, spiral-bound with red tulips on the cover. I’ve been through them all. Silently he takes the book from me and reads on.

  ‘“The footprints are not solid like the prints of a normal man. Each one is distinguished by a deep cleft that runs from toe to heel.”’ The writing stops, and Arthur stops too. ‘What is this guy? And where’s the rest of the story? This is the ultimate cliffhanger.’

  I produce a third book. This one is a reporter’s notebook full of meaningless calculations and meter readings. There’s a shopping list too: potatoes, spring onions, Winalot. I flick through until I find a few more paragraphs of narrative and read them out loud.

  ‘“The stranger stops, as if he can feel her eyes on him. ‘Who are you?’ Bella wants to know. ‘You seem familiar . . .’ The man pushes back his hood. The shadows about his face remain, as if they have always been there. His eyes are the fathomless black of river pebbles. Bella gasps. ‘I do know you. You’re the miller!’ He does not reply. Instead he asks the girl a question; a question she does not want to answer. ‘Tell me. Did you drown your sister in the millpond?’ Lucie remains tight-lipped. Her eyes grow as black as his. ‘That,’ she says, ‘I will never tell.’” Lucie? What the hell am I doing in there? What’s she trying to say?’

  Arthur scratches his head. ‘A misprint, obviously. Secrets never to be told. Where’s the rest of it?’

  ‘Do you think she’s guessed, about me and Reuben? She must have. That’s why she’s writing all this stuff, about secrets and sisters and betrayal.’ I wave at the books. ‘I’m still piecing the rest of it together.’

  I’m haunted by the fear that my secret is about to be exposed. I cannot sleep for it. I am both the dark older sister and the golden child entangled in the waterweed. But that anxiety has been overshadowed by something else. I slip an old newspaper cutting from my pocket. It’s yellow and criss-crossed with knife-edge creases from being folded between the pages of The Scottish Miller’s Tale.

  ‘You need to see this. What do you know about Anna Madigan?’

  My question catches Arthur off guard. He takes a sip of his drink; frown lines gather above his spectacles. ‘She and her husband were friends of my parents. I remember she had red hair and baked really good brownies.’

  I allow myself a smile. ‘So they were quite close then?’

  Arthur sets down the drink and leans back in his chair. ‘I suppose so. I remember Ma and Dad going to dinner parties at the Madigans’, but only because my babysitter let me stay up to watch Twin Peaks. It must have fizzled out. I don’t think I remember the Madigans being around when I was growing up.’

  ‘Twin Peaks?’ I tilt my head and fix him with a look that makes him chuckle. ‘You must have been a strange child. Anyway, Anna Madigan. Over the last few weeks, your mother has sort of lost interest in what I’m doing, like she’s in her own little world, but I’ve been trying to sort
out all the mess. There are cuttings everywhere, but these ones . . .’

  The clipping is from five years ago. I spread it out on the table and make a dramatic gesture with my hand.

  Arthur peers at the newsprint. ‘Anna Madigan disappeared? Was she ever found?’

  I lift my shoulders and make a face. ‘Not that I can see.’

  Arthur blows out a breath. ‘I’ve never heard about this.’

  ‘These cuttings chart Anna’s disappearance over a period of years. Every time a body was washed up, the papers rehashed the whole thing. Must have been a nightmare for the family. If your mother wasn’t close friends with this Anna, then why has she kept them all?’

  ‘Maybe Ma just had a passing interest in what happened to an old friend. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Depends who the old friend was.’ I’m thinking of Reuben. If they were dragging the river for him . . . yes, I’d want to know. How would I feel if they found a body? My mind refuses to go there. I would be bereft, of course. But it would be a freedom of sorts. The thought is so unwholesome I push it away. ‘You need to read it.’

  Mac

  Anna Madigan came to see me.

  It was about a month after Jim’s death; three weeks, perhaps. There’s an old Irish quip – would you take my coffin so quick? – a jibe at those who move in rather too rapidly on something that belongs to you. Horribly apt, really. But this time, there was nothing left for Anna Madigan to take.

  I was in the hall with the dogs when she knocked. They went berserk and I had to hold on to their collars while fumbling with the door and shouting through the crack. ‘Step back, whoever you are! And don’t put your hands in your pockets!’ Eventually I got the door fully open and there she was – Anna Madigan, standing like a schoolgirl in the dinner queue, hands by her sides and her handbag gripped under her oxter. Max sniffed her cowboy boots, and Jethro continued to bark for no reason whatsoever. I gave him a warning dunt with my knee.

  I stared at her, but her gaze slid away from mine.

  She was younger than us, Jim and me, but she was pushing sixty by then. She looked like she’d hardly aged. Down to good genes, perhaps, or a damned expensive night cream. Fifteen years had passed since I’d last confronted her in a hallway. The red hair was duller and shot through with silver, trimmed and straightened and coaxed into a longish bob. She was wearing a cute little fawn trench coat and a silky blouse with butterflies on it. We spoke at the same time.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I came to offer my condolences.’

  I turned to go back into the house. ‘Don’t bother. I don’t want them.’

  ‘Please . . .’ She followed me, lingering rather determinedly on the threshold so that I couldn’t close the door. The dogs had disappeared into the garden.

  I gave a shrug and she followed me into the hall. She didn’t fit this house. She was too colourful and modern and I didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

  ‘I know you probably don’t want to see me, but I felt I had to come.’

  I wasn’t comfortable facing her here in the hall; I had nothing to hide behind. I asked her if she wanted a cuppa, because the making of it would give me something to do, and she smiled, as if I’d forgiven her, and we went through to the kitchen.

  She plonked herself, uninvited, at the head of the table.

  ‘Richard doesn’t know I’m here,’ she said. ‘He thinks I’ve gone for a walk with the dog.’

  ‘You have a dog?’

  ‘She’s in the car.’

  I hadn’t heard a car, but then I noticed the set of keys in her hand. The key ring was adorned with a ridiculously oversized, furry panda. Classic Anna Madigan. I busied myself with the tea things. ‘So you’re still dissembling. Still hiding things.’

  She looked at her hands. She was wearing a very pretty shade of polish on her nails. Coral, I think you’d call it. I noticed something else too: that sapphire pendant, Jim’s love token, obviously mended after our tussle and now reinstated around her brass neck. I saw a glint of blue, cunningly concealed beneath the lapels of her blouse.

  ‘All that is done with. I wrote to you. I tried to explain, to apologise.’

  ‘Yes, I got your letter.’

  She looked at me as though she was expecting something. Her eyes matched the pendant, bright sapphire, like they’d never known heartache, or anything dark and sullied. What did she want me to say? What was she seeking – absolution?

  I looked right into those blue eyes. ‘I also found the emails you sent to Jim shortly before his accident.’

  She hadn’t been expecting that.

  There is nothing more dangerous than a silently smiling woman. Anna sits there, smirking at me. She almost stole my husband, my child’s father. She was thwarted first time around – my threat to tell her husband put paid to her game – but she came back a second time! I found those emails, just before my husband’s death, telling him she’d never stopped loving him. She wanted to see him again, after all that time. That’s what hurt me the most, that passion could survive such absence. At the time of the affair, Arthur had been a teenager, and Jim was afraid he’d go off the rails if he left. He needed his father, and that’s why Jim had stayed. He didn’t choose me. He didn’t stay for me.

  I read my husband’s replies to this woman’s entreaties. Jim was in love with Anna Madigan until the day he died.

  A splash of milk and the tea is ready. I’ve chosen a rather nice cup and saucer for her: vintage fine bone china, patterned with yellow roses. I place it in front of her. She makes a little start as if she’s lost in thought, and takes a sip, still smiling politely.

  ‘You know, few of us stop to think about fine bone china,’ I say. When I have her surprised attention, I continue, ‘It actually contains finely milled cow bones. You can distinguish it from porcelain by holding it up to the light.’ I lift my own cup, which is empty, to the kitchen window. ‘It has a translucent, ivory colour, whereas porcelain appears very white.’

  She doesn’t quite know how to reply, gently replacing her cup on its saucer.

  ‘Of course, Charles Krafft, an experimental American artist, has taken it to a whole new level, with the introduction of human bones. He makes little bone china trinkets out of exhumed skeletons – a keepsake for the loved ones left behind. Human bones can be burned and milled to form a very fine ash. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.’

  Anna Madigan is still smiling, but very faintly now. The nervous pulse in her neck makes the sapphire pendant glint brightly for a second. I smile back.

  ‘Drink up your tea while it’s still hot.’

  Lucie

  Dundee woman Anna Madigan has not been seen for over a fortnight. Mrs Madigan, a fifty-nine-year-old office manager, was reported missing by her husband, Richard, on 9 September, when she failed to return from walking the family dog at Tentsmuir Forest. Her car was subsequently found close to the area, but no sightings of Mrs Madigan or her dog, Floss, have been reported. Police are keeping an open mind, although the area has become notorious in the last few years as a suicide hotspot.

  After a few minutes Arthur looks up. ‘From the way you’re looking at me – is there something I’m missing?’

  ‘The dog. Floss.’

  He glances back down at the paper. ‘There are loads of dogs called Floss.’

  ‘When did your mother get her Floss?’

  Arthur sits back in surprise. ‘What are you saying? It’s a coincidence, that’s all.’

  ‘When?’ My eyes are burning into him. I can’t help it. Unpleasant thoughts are uncoiling in my brain. ‘How old is she – Floss?’

  ‘Um . . . well, we got her from the kennels in Dundee. About . . . God, I dunno. She must be about six or seven.’

  ‘Did you go with your mother to pick her up?’

  ‘No, she just –’

  ‘Appeared?’

  ‘When you put it like that, yes, but –’

  ‘Did your mother ever speak about getting another d
og? Three dogs is quite a handful for a woman who’s always moaning about her health.’

  Arthur swigs the last of his gin and tonic. A bit angrily, I think. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m getting at either, I just thought it was all a bit strange. But then your mother is very strange.’ I shake my head like a bewildered child. Arthur’s face is sullen. When he’s annoyed, his lips become thin. Lines appear, between his brows and around his mouth. His friendly golden glow fades as quickly as if someone pressed a dimmer switch.

  ‘It doesn’t even say what type of dog Anna’s Floss was.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s just leave it.’

  ‘Let’s not. You brought it up. What’s your point?’

  ‘Don’t make an issue about it.’

  ‘You’re the one with the issue. Why bring all this up?’ He swipes a hand towards the cuttings. ‘My mother is a hoarder. That doesn’t mean she knows anything about this.’

  I let out a sigh. The weirdness of Mac’s world is getting to me. My head is making connections it probably shouldn’t and I feel guilty, but I have to have the last word.

  ‘I just think your mother is getting really . . . unhinged.’

  It’s not a nice word to use about someone’s mother. There’s a pause, and Arthur stares into his glass. I long to take it back. I wish I could be gentle with him. He looks up, fixes his gaze on one of the pub’s twinkly amber lamps.

  ‘She phoned me. About Reuben,’ he says eventually. He rolls his shoulders, takes a breath. I get the feeling he didn’t mean to speak of this, but it’s one of those things that has to be held up to the light. That’s why I write rubbish poems. Secrets need an airing from time to time, whether it’s a good idea or not. ‘She hinted that she – that she could have killed him, there in the mill.’

  ‘What? When was this?’

  ‘The last time he turned up looking for you. She said she’d thought about pushing him down the basement stairs, but when I confronted her about it she denied ever saying that to me on the phone.’