Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  I stare at him, my breathing suddenly shallow. ‘Seriously?’

  He frowns at me. ‘It’s not something I’d make up.’

  I look away. ‘I think . . . I’ve noticed a change in her. When I started she was rude and messy and eccentric, but I got used to that. But there’s a line, isn’t there?’

  Arthur nods. We make troubled eye contact. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘The doctor, maybe?’ I’m thinking Alzheimer’s, early onset dementia and all the other things I don’t want to mention. ‘When was the last time she saw a doctor?’

  ‘I did mention it to her GP.’

  ‘Make sure he takes it seriously, Arthur. Okay, maybe I’m out of order with the cuttings. They probably mean nothing but, to be honest, your mother isn’t making sense a lot of the time.’

  He holds up his hands. ‘I know. I know. I haven’t done anything about it because . . . I don’t want to lose her, too.’

  His face is very still, taut. He snatches off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. He looks vulnerable without the glasses, as if he’s removed a piece of armour. I reach for his hand. I try to imagine it being my mother unravelling, but I can’t. My mother is far too buttoned up.

  ‘Mac – she’s a writer, someone who trades on her imagination. Perhaps we’re reading too much into this. Try not to worry.’

  We seem to run out of words. Arthur replaces his specs and drains his glass. I take that as my cue and gather up my stuff. The newspaper cutting I fold carefully and slot into an old envelope. We get to our feet simultaneously and I hug his side, sliding my arm around his back when he just stands there, unresponsive.

  ‘Are you coming back to mine?’ I give him a squeeze, but he moves away.

  ‘I could,’ he says. ‘But I’m not going to.’

  I find it hard to do affection. Even though I half-expected the rebuff, it stings. I stomp away. It’s already almost dark outside, and spitting rain. As the heavy pub door swings shut, we fumble about for a moment, buttoning coats, securing scarves. We have no answers: not about Anna Madigan, not about Mac, not about us. I am dissatisfied, and pissed off with Arthur.

  ‘You need to decide what you want,’ he says, as we exit the car park. ‘Stop drifting. Stop letting things happen to you.’

  I bristle. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Reuben and you just “happened”. You drifted in here because you’d run out of options. And now you’ve drifted into me.’

  I want to bite back, but he’s on a roll.

  ‘I’m not a stopgap. I’m not your comfort blanket. I really care about you, but I don’t know where I stand.’

  I look down at the tarmac. ‘In a pub car park, right about now. You think too much, that’s your trouble.’

  ‘If you want me, Lucie . . .’ Arthur’s words are clear and cold, pebbles dropping to the bottom of the millpond. ‘If you want to be with me, it has to be a decision.’

  He looks like he might say more, but instead raises his shoulders, then drops them with a sigh.

  I turn to face him. I’m not sure what to say. I do care about him, but the words won’t come out. It all feels a bit premature. I’m not sure how long it takes to get over someone, even if they’re never truly yours in the first place. I’m shivering. Arthur comes closer and takes my cold hand in his warm one. His heat seeps into me, makes me take a jagged breath. I’m scared I’m going to cry.

  ‘You have to decide if this is right for you. I know what I want,’ he says. ‘Come on. I’ll walk you home.’

  We stroll up the hill, barely talking, but it’s easy all the same, like I don’t have to try. I wish I had space for him. When we reach the cottage door, he turns to me and kisses me lightly on the mouth, tells me he’ll see me soon.

  I’ve left the heating on, and the cottage is warm. I drop my bag, my keys, on the table and stand there, not moving, listening to the clock ticking. I take out my mobile and automatically check it for messages, but the screen reveals nothing. Reuben has stopped texting me now. He’s moved on. My stomach flutters once, twice. Loneliness is a solid lump inside me.

  It’s in that moment that I make my decision.

  Lucie

  October

  ‘Let me see my gift,’ says Bella, and the miller smiles like a wolf, like some creature that shouldn’t possess a smile. He makes a slight bow and gestures towards the door. ‘Not here in the yard,’ he says. ‘Let’s return to the hall.’ Bella hesitates before beginning to retrace her steps. She can feel his eyes on her. Her spine drips with ice.

  The guests are excited by the reappearance of the jute sack, and press themselves into a rowdy, wine-soaked circle, which the candlelight doesn’t quite reach. The miller places the sack in the centre and his gaze touches every face. One by one the revellers fall silent. With a trickster’s sleight of hand the miller whisks away the covering and reveals the most exquisite harp. There is a collective gasp. Bella presses her cold hand to her throat. The instrument is beautifully fashioned. She cannot look away from the curved bow of it, pale as moonstone, or the spun-gold, gossamer-fine strings.

  Of its own accord, with no human agency, the harp begins to sing.

  The miller smiles.

  The harp sings like a bird at first light, pure and sweet. It vibrates with a sound like the thrip thrip thrip of wings in the hedgerow. The music is wistful, an unearthly humming that vibrates through the oak rafters and the stone walls. The wedding guests can feel it shivering up the backs of their legs, through their ribcages.

  Just as Bella thinks she can stand its sweetness no longer, the frail notes begin to change. They become discordant. They take on a whining tone. As she listens, the tone becomes a voice, and the notes become words. Harsh words, full of blame. And their message is unmistakeable:

  ‘My sister! Killed by my own sister! Killed by my own sister! My sister! Killed. Killed. Killed.’

  The guests look at each other with horror. The father bellows in rage and the mother wipes her eyes. Bella is paralysed. She claps her hands to her ears. ‘Make it stop!’ she cries. ‘Make it stop!’

  The miller is still smiling. Bella begins to understand then that nothing on earth will make the harp stop.

  So this is how it ends. My fingers drop from the keyboard and I ease myself back in Mac’s chair. My head hurts, and a dragging pain has settled in my lower back. I feel like I’ve been standing for too long on a cold stone floor in a draughty hall. I’m part of that strange ring of wedding guests, beyond the civilised circle of light.

  The computer programme issues a prompt: Do you want to save changes to The Cruel Sister? Do I have a choice? Things are changing so quickly that I can’t keep up. October has slipped into my bones, and I still don’t have a plan. I should have a plan by now. I click save and the document fades to black, and I sit looking at the blank screen for a long time, until my bladder finally forces me to act.

  There’s a tiny toilet off the hall. It’s unheated and old-fashioned, with chipped white porcelain and one of those high cisterns with a pull flush. The oak toilet seat is so old I swear it has woodworm. I sit down to relieve myself with Mac’s tartan blanket still slung around my shoulders. Perhaps I am turning into Mac, mooching about these corridors and ignoring all contact with the outside world. A few weeks ago, I’d received mail from my mother – news from home in a modest notelet with pansies on the front. It smelled of the manse, and her handwriting was as familiar to me as her Sunday shoes, or her pink dressing gown. I wonder if Jane has revealed the love poem and my own traitorous handwriting. Have either of them identified my distinctive strokes and loops, like miscreants in a police line-up? I’d checked her news for passive aggression but there was none, just a mention of my father’s dodgy knee and something about the Friendship Circle. Mrs Black has put the hardware shop on the market and my old school pal Becky just got engaged. Jane has been on a date with a new man, a head teacher she met at a conference. Shortly after that
I had two missed calls from Jane. Her voicemail message was brief: nothing to worry about, just hoping for a catch-up. I suspect she wants to tell me about the new man, now that Reuben is off the scene. If only we could parcel the past away as neatly as our old dolls.

  I cannot reply to my mother, or chat with my sister. To do so would be to invest in the future and I don’t dare let myself expand any further than the present tense. What I am is right here, right now. I am the cold toilet seat pressing into my buttocks, the irritating drip of the cold tap. I am the green tiles, the balding loo brush. I cannot think beyond my own griping pain, the stuck-fast pressure that has been building in my belly all day.

  Mac

  I come downstairs to find Lucie exiting the WC. She’s as white as a sheet and biting her lower lip.

  ‘Good heavens, girl. Got a gippy tummy? You look like death warmed up.’

  She smiles weakly. The only bits of colour in her face are the livid dents in her lower lip made by her teeth.

  ‘Not feeling great. Maybe I’ll go –’

  ‘Just go! Yes, indeed. Take yourself off to bed.’ I hope she isn’t going to be sick. She has that clammy look, and her fringe is sticking to her brow. Whatever’s wrong with her, she deserves it, but I try and come up with a pleasant expression. ‘You’ll feel as right as rain after a nap.’

  She nods. ‘I’ll take home the laptop and your book and type up the rest of your story. Is that it? Is that the end?’

  I glance at the canvas shopping bag leaning against the coat stand, trying to think back to what I wrote last. ‘The harp is singing? Ah yes, proclaiming Bella’s guilt for all to hear!’

  Lucie shivers. ‘It’s never going to stop, is it – the guilt? The voice isn’t going to stop until she takes responsibility for what she’s done.’

  I don’t answer. Sometimes you have to be made to take responsibility. But I don’t say that to her. Instead, I move over to the stand and unhook her khaki jacket. It’s unlined and insubstantial. ‘This is very light, dear. Do you have a heavier one for the winter? You might catch a chill. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’

  She looks alarmed, and I wonder, not for the first time, if she’ll stay, or if she’ll up and leave like the wild geese as soon as my manuscript is finished. For some reason the thought disturbs me. It makes me feel cheated. Wrongdoers simply can’t be allowed to up and leave.

  ‘I haven’t planned that far ahead,’ she says.

  I proffer the jacket and she shrugs into it, meekly. Again I wonder if I’m making her nervous.

  ‘That isn’t the end,’ I say quickly. She darts me a look and I press home the point. ‘Aren’t you wondering about the miller? And about how the harp was made? Oh, there’s more to come.’ I tap my temple, as if it’s all up there, waiting to gush forth.

  She buttons her jacket, slings the bag over her shoulder. ‘Write it down then. Let’s get it finished.’ She opens the door, steps out into the cold.

  Her attitude makes me bristle. ‘Hold on a minute. Don’t dismiss it all like that.’

  She swings around. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like these stories have no consequence. Oh they do. They do. You’ll find that out.’

  She snorts, bats my indignation away with her hand and continues walking. How dare she?

  ‘How dare you, Anna Madigan?’ I yell from the doorstep. ‘You slut! How dare you come in here upsetting everything?’

  The girl stops dead in her tracks, turns around slowly. She’s a distance away now. I think she might be saying something but I can’t hear her. I can’t stop the words coming out of my mouth. I fire every vile insult I can muster at her, and she hunches her shoulders and hurries off into the distance.

  ‘There are consequences, Anna!’ I yell after her departing figure.

  I remain on the front step until she disappears from view. Anna? Why is Anna always in my head? I shake her away. Despite my winter woollies, an icy breeze does its best to raise gooseflesh on my upper arms. Lucie. I must concentrate on Lucie now. The story is nearly finished.

  There isn’t much more to tell, but what’s left is the shocking part.

  It’s the bit that changes what you think you know.

  Lucie

  I go for a lie down, but I can’t get comfortable and end up sitting on one of the hard pine chairs at the kitchen table. I figure I should probably stay close to the bathroom, since I seem to have developed the frequent urge to pee. The pain is restless, gripping me from time to time like a bad period. I make tea from Mac’s garden mint, munch on some dry crackers and watch Friends on my laptop. Rachel and Ross are on a break, although the terms and conditions of it seem a bit muddy.

  I’d had to finish with Arthur. ‘This isn’t going anywhere,’ I’d said, as gently as I could. ‘It can’t go anywhere.’ I won’t let it. That last bit remained unsaid. There were a lot of really important things left unsaid in that conversation. You’ll understand. Soon. He took it so well I think I hate him. I wanted him to fight for me, for what we could have had, but instead he was strangely passive. I think he’d been expecting it all along.

  But that was weeks ago now. I’ve tried to give up visiting the cafe, or the pub. I sit in the cottage and watch Friends until the light fades. Then I close my curtains so I don’t have to look at the mill. Floss has stopped coming around because I refuse to let her in. The particular mystery of her background is too much for me to handle at the moment, and I’m not sure where I found the energy to get wound up about it in the first place. I can’t bear to walk beside the pond either. According to the story, Bella took her sister’s life there. I’m just as guilty. I took something just as precious from Jane – not just her boyfriend but all the things she’ll never get back: her trust, her hopes for the future, her peace of mind. Guilt is indestructible. I know there’ll be a reckoning, some day soon.

  I have distanced myself from everyone who cares. It seems easier that way. I am shrinking in on myself, but that’s not the whole story.

  Mac

  There’s something timeless about building a fire. I could be my mother going through these motions, or my grandmother. It’s a meditative act. You can stand outside of yourself, quite separate from it. You can watch your sins turn black as soot.

  I should have made this particular fire many months ago. Before Lucie came. The girl is responsible for stirring up old memories. All this carry on with Reuben – the girl is another Anna Madigan, stirring up trouble, causing grief. Perhaps it’s a good thing that she did. There are things I need to deal with before I become too frail. This bonfire will be a cleansing. A ritual flame. A way of getting rid of those things I have held onto for too long.

  In the dark, I assume a prayer position among the mud and dead leaves. As I crouch and steady myself I feel earth beneath my knuckles; damp, peaty mould. Something crawls across the back of my hand. My nose stings in the cold air, as though I’ve been dunked in icy water. My ears find every chirrup, every last squeak in the night. The old ticker is pumping so furiously I think I might collapse right here on the bare ground. They would never find me out here. My body would disappear beneath a coverlet of organic matter. I would become a rotted layer of the past. I’d simply dissolve and everything would right itself.

  But I can do this. I am here to build a fire, a fire bigger than any grate or chimney will allow. It will be uncontained. Yes, there’s something timeless about building a fire.

  First, twist greasy old newspaper into fat croissants; next, add a firelighter that makes your fingers stink of paraffin; build a little tent of kindling, paper-white slivers of pine and ash. Always keep your axe sharp for the kindling. Don’t leave it embedded in the block – the sap will rust the edge. Chopping kindling with a good, sharp axe should be effortless, like slicing through a Viennetta.

  I’ve already prepared the kindling. Disarticulated it. The axe was sharp. It was a lot like slicing through a Viennetta.

  Lucie

  Sleep comes in fits and star
ts. I wake up after only an hour and take myself through the house to glug down two paracetamol at the kitchen tap. The water is icy, freezing a track down into my deepest parts. I can’t stop shivering, and have to boil the kettle to make up a hot water bottle. After twenty minutes the pain in my back starts to subside and I wander off to bed. I miss Floss. I miss her undemanding presence. I doze. Some time in the night, the pain creeps around to my front, a foreign ache that grips me low in the belly, and I have to lie with my knees drawn up. I clutch the hot water bottle to the sore place, but I start to sweat and fretfully throw off my covers. The gap in the curtain is still showing midnight black. Sleep vanishes, and, cursing, I get up again, feel around for my slippers and stagger back to the kitchen. Thoughts of tea and toast make me nauseous. I could go outside for a fag, but I gave up smoking around the same time I gave up Arthur.

  I’m worried about Floss. Pulling a smelly old quilted coat of Mac’s over my nightie, I stick my feet into wellies and unlock the back door. Thoughts start to whirl around in my brain. Could Floss really be Anna Madigan’s dog? Perhaps Anna Madigan wanted to leave her husband, to just disappear. You hear about that all the time; people getting so overwhelmed with life that they take off, leaving no trail. Jesus, I thought of it myself, on that Aberdeen to London train. Anything to get away from the guilt. It would be classic Mac, to take the dog. I can just imagine that conversation, in Mac’s draughty kitchen: ‘Well, you run off if you want to, Anna, but don’t abandon the damn dog!’

  Although I call her name softly, there is no sign of the little spaniel. I look up at the sky, a deep navy blue, speckled with stars. I wonder where Anna Madigan is, whether she and Mac ever kept in touch.

  Far off, a bird of some kind sets up a piercing alarm call. I can smell smoke. I sniff the air sharply, like an animal – the acrid bonfire scent is unmistakeable. My first thought is the mill, with all that dodgy wiring and rotting timber. I hurry round the corner. Smoke hangs in the gloom, and the stone walls hover in and out of focus like ghosts. Off to the left, a good distance from the building, flames leap and crackle. A dark figure, witch-like in the fiery glow, is doing something with a rake. Sparks pop and scatter like champagne bubbles. I release my tightly held breath with a groan.