Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  For fuck’s sake, Mac. What next?

  She greets me from across the bonfire, as if this is a normal autumn garden tidy-up; as if I’m not standing there in the pitch black, bewildered, in my nightclothes.

  ‘Hello, Bella!’ she says. ‘What a blaze!’

  She appears to be burning a vast quantity of branches and leaves. The heat is so fierce I have to shield my face with one hand as I edge closer. I can only see her top half, arms bunched as she brandishes the rake. Her face is a waxy orange ‘O’, wavering and reforming in the heat haze. I think she’s grinning, but the smoke gets in my eyes and everything blurs.

  Without warning, something cracks in the centre, and the blaze caves in, flinging burning embers my way. I jump back. White-hot heat engulfs me, and my streaming eyes make it impossible to make sense of what I’m seeing – noirish impressions of things that shouldn’t be there: twigs that look like ribs; a charred twist of something long and bony; black fingers set into claws. Painted nails. I recoil, rub my eyes. What?

  Something pops inside. Inside me. Water soaks my thighs, gushes into my wellies. Liquid splashes to the ground and the hot ash sizzles where it falls.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mac is beside me, even though I hadn’t seen her move. She’s surveying the wetness with a profound sadness. She smells otherworldly, of smoke and soot. I’m mortified, clamping my legs together, tugging at my sodden nightie. Her hand shoots out, finds the hard swell of my abdomen beneath the borrowed coat.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  I shake my head, still in denial. Real tears now, not smoke tears, trailing down to my chin. I can taste the salt.

  Mac is still speaking. ‘Go inside. Go back to bed. Nothing will happen before morning. I’ve a few things to do here . . .’ She’s looking at the bonfire, which is starting to die down. The blackened rib-like things . . . She hefts the rake into the heart of the blaze and they disappear from view. ‘Go to bed, dear. We’ll sort things out in the morning.’

  She moves away, whistling a strange little tune. Sobbing, I stumble back to the cottage.

  The plastic curtain around the bath is brightly patterned with polka dots, red, green and yellow. As I sit on the toilet, waiting for the shower to run hot, waiting for my body to empty itself, they dance before my eyes. In my head I’m joining up the dots; a child immersed in a puzzle, biting my lip, unable to figure things out. As steam billows around the curtain I force myself to my feet, strip off my sodden T-shirt, release each welly with a dull, wet plop. I climb into the bath and let the spray batter me. It’s scalding, but I don’t care. I’m numb.

  For the first time in a long time I look down at my naked self. I splay my hands on either side of my abdomen and inspect my round football of a belly. The skin is taut and smooth, the water bouncing off in rivulets. It looks like someone else’s skin. My breasts are someone else’s breasts, larger than mine, pale and solid and blue-veined. I cup one of them, cautiously, as if it belongs to another woman and I’m not sure of my welcome. The nipple is hard and brown and my palm comes away wet with milk. Everything is draining from me. Everything. My legs can no longer support me and I sink slowly down into the tub, sink down until I’m on all fours, watching everything spiral down the drain, out of my body, beyond my control. I can no longer hide from myself, from what I’ve done.

  I remain there on all fours, like an animal, wounded, trapped. The hot spray pelts down on my neck, on my back. I focus on the plughole, come to know it intimately, the brown plaque around it, the soap scum and the trapped hair. Pain and fear overwhelm me. I am naked and shivering and exposed. Eventually, I sit back on my heels, close my eyes, hold my face up to the gushing water.

  The past has caught up with me.

  Mac

  Well, this is a bit of a pickle.

  Lucie has been pregnant all along. That’s put a dampener on my bonfire, that’s for sure. She was acting the innocent, but surely she must have known? I’ve never believed all those stories about women popping out infants without an inkling that they’d a bun in the oven. It doesn’t add up, but Lucie is very good at hiding things. Would she ever have confessed? Well, regardless, her body has decided to end this charade. Some things simply cannot remain hidden.

  Poking gently at the hot, powdery ash on the margins of the blaze, I wonder how best to proceed. I cannot allow myself to worry about Lucie’s predicament right at this moment. I am consumed by my task. I’ve started, so I’ll have to continue, to paraphrase Mastermind.

  Magnus Magnusson would know what to do. Or I could have asked Anita, guru of all things bone, for advice, but instead I turned, against my better judgement, to the Google. Too much information can be as unhelpful as too little. One Californian fire chief was almost poetic in his graphic descriptions of how the process works: Body fat can make a good fuel source, but it needs material such as clothing or charred wood to act as a wick.

  Five years rotting in a water-soaked tunnel have denied me a fuel source, and the clothing I disposed of before things became too unpleasant. That nice trench coat, the silky cream blouse with the butterflies on it, the too-young-for-her jeans. I had thought to donate them to charity, since they were of such good quality. Some poor soul would have been glad of that coat in this dreich weather, but I thought better of it. I cut them up and burned them too. The pendant I squirreled away in my study drawer. I had almost forgotten it was there, until Lucie brought to the surface all those horrible memories. It seemed very fitting to feed it through the mill. I recall a fragment of poetry – Longfellow, I believe: ‘A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round; if they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground.’ That about sums it up. Love is just a power play, with winners and losers. The Bellas and the Annas and the Lucies might enjoy a moment of glory, but Elspeth and Jane and me – we’ve still got a tale to tell.

  The disposing of the clothes – that was a bit of a low point. That was when I let the embittered voyeur in me untwist, slick its way sickeningly to the surface. After the outerwear, the bra and pants had to come off. Matching undies, wouldn’t you know? Such a cliché. Pale cream with ecru lace trim. I’d peeled them away as a lover might – as Jim must have done – gently unhooking the bra, sliding the knickers down over her ankles. The fabric was dank; her skin like hard candle wax. So, so cold. I imagined how my husband would have traced her once-warm breasts with his hands, her narrow waist, and I wept hot, thick tears – bodily fluids dripping onto that sparse mat of pubic hair in some ghastly subversion of what my husband did to her.

  Assuming there is sufficient wick material, the body can sustain its own fire for around seven hours. Given that I was dealing with skeletal remains, I estimated that four to five hours would suffice. It gave me a good deal of unwelcome thinking time. There had never been any satisfaction in the deed. A fleeting moment of exultation, perhaps. But I had misunderstood, about the ending. Jealousy acts as a wick; it just keeps the hate burning brighter.

  I poke at some of the top timbers. They haven’t quite taken hold – too green, I should have used seasoned logs – but underneath, the flames are flickering nicely. As the green wood shifts, the heart of the fire pops and sparks and cracks open like an egg, molten innards searing my face. There’s something black in the centre, a nucleus, like that dark, bloody fleck you sometimes find in an egg yolk, repulsive and nauseating. You know it shouldn’t be there, yet you still have to deal with it. The black thing flexes and unfurls, reaching out beyond the flames: a curled fist, with one charred pinkie cocked, as though taking tea from a bone china cup. The fist is defiant. I push it back into the blaze with a hasty jab of the rake.

  How like Anna Madigan not to give up without a fight.

  Lucie

  The now familiar swoosh and grind of the mill rouses me, and I surface from sleep with my heart already bumping. How could I have slept? The noise of the waterwheel rattles me into full wakefulness, and I struggle to sit up, praying that what happened in the night was just a ba
d dream. The full hardness of my belly reminds me that it was not, and that there is more to come. Dread washes through me all over again, but for now, there’s no pain, just a dull tension. My body smells comfortingly of shower gel.

  The curtain gap reveals a strip of just-about-there daylight. I reach for my phone to check on the time. It’s just after eight. I thought Mac might have come to my aid, but she’s obviously totally involved with whatever she’s doing. What the fuck is she doing? The fire, her unhinged behaviour, the grinning, the singing . . . the stuff on the bonfire. What did I see? I was in pain, panicky. It was dark, but . . .

  Should I call Arthur? I’ve invested so much energy in keeping him away, keeping him from finding out about this fix I’m in. It wasn’t a choice I wanted to make, but how would he feel about a pregnant me? Sure, he’d be kind and supportive and no doubt encourage me to eat enough cakes for two, but he’d get sucked in, and I’d never know the truth. I want him to choose me because he can’t bear to live without me, and not because I’m some idiot charity case.

  I glance back down at the phone. He’s texted me a couple of times in the last week: How are you doing? Pop in for a coffee. The scones are just out of the oven. I’d kept my replies brief and discouraging. To alert him to his mother’s odd behaviour would alert him to mine. I’d done a damn good job of concealing this baby, even from myself. The more I hid it, the more I pretended this wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening to me. Only the pain compelled me to face up to the inevitable.

  Reuben. I could call Reuben, but I have no idea how he would react in a crisis, especially one such as this. I’ve never seen that kind of Reuben, and he’s never seen that kind of me. How would he cope with a vulnerable, scared, needy Lucie? I don’t want to find out. Grief drenches me down to my toes.

  What do I do? What do I do?

  Eventually I text him. Eventually he texts back. I pace around the room, tapping my mobile against my chin. I don’t want anyone near me, but I can’t do this alone. I pause by the window to haul back the curtains. Pain knifes through me. The phone clatters to the floor. I’m gripping the window ledge with all my strength, gripping until my fingers turn white. The contraction overpowers me. I am helpless.

  Breathe. Just breathe. Isn’t that what they tell you to do? Jane pops into my mind. I exhale, eyes screwed up, concentrating on my out-breath. It mists the cold windowpane. Jane and I used to watch One Born Every Minute. It had become one of those cult things with us, required viewing after a wine or two, when we were in the mood to be entertained, alarmed, freaked out. Look at the size of that bump! Oh my God, I can see the head! Seriously? That’s gross. I wish I’d listened more to the midwives, delivering solid-gold words of wisdom, despite that extra flick of mascara for the cameras. I wish I’d sneered less at all the panting and the groaning. I wish I hadn’t covered my eyes during the scary parts.

  The vicious squeeze subsides and I get to breathe normally again. It’s grey outside, but all the mill lights are on; the place looks like an advent calendar on Christmas Eve, open and expectant. The incessant trundling of the machinery grates on my already shredded nerves.

  I thrust my feet into my slippers, drag a blanket round me and waddle towards the kitchen. My bump had been slight, easy to hide, easy to ignore, but now it has expanded to fill my entire being. It is all I am aware of. Every fibre of the house has altered to accommodate it. The walls tilt under my questing hands, the chair groans beneath my weight. The clock ticks louder and the old-house smell makes me gag. I have entered some kind of otherworld where nothing is quite the same, and there is no going back. This new knowledge shakes me to the core. Soon I will split into two, like some exotic species. I have no baby clothes, no cradle, no experience. I have no one to rescue me. No place to go.

  The laptop sits folded on the table in front of me. If I Google ‘labour’, it might give me some pointers. On the telly they time the contractions, but I don’t know how long this limbo lasts. I flip open the computer, press the button. Surely Mac will come? I think of my mother as the screen bursts into life. She hated us watching One Born Every Minute: ‘You’ll know all about that soon enough. Switch it off.’

  She’s always been like that about anything dodgy. Sex was something we never, ever discussed. When she walked in on Reuben and me, I thought we would both die of embarrassment, but we didn’t. There were consequences, but nobody died. I won’t die of this either, but somehow I have to get through it and come out the other side.

  The contractions are coming every ten minutes. I’m timing them by the digital display on the computer while simultaneously revising childbirth. I’m sticking to the NHS site because it has nice images of serenely pregnant women and freshly laundered babies in hats.

  Contact your midwifery team if:

  • your contractions are regular and coming about 3 in every 10 minutes

  • your waters break

  • your contractions are very strong and you feel you need pain relief

  • you’re worried about anything.

  If I had a midwifery team.

  I cope with the spasms by getting to my feet and leaning on the table. The table is solid, unshockable. It absorbs my tears, my swear words, my sweat. My nails make marks on the underside. I’d chew it if I could. But each time I think I cannot take any more, the pain eases off and I breathe and wipe my eyes. An hour passes in this way, two, and I’m still holding off. I can’t commit to this. I can’t make a decision. I want Mac to come and take over.

  For all her craziness, I still want Mac, with her calmness and her logic and her unvarnished version of everything. Her notebook is sitting to the left of the computer. In a calm moment I flick it open to her latest words.

  ‘She killed me! She killed me! My own sister!’

  The hall has fallen silent. There is no sound but the soft vibration of the strings. The words are as crystal clear and ice cold as the water gushing from the mill wheel. There is no escape, no going back. All eyes are on Bella.

  ‘What trickery is this?’ their father roars. His sergeant reaches for his sword. ‘That is my little Elspeth’s voice.’ The mother weeps into her hands.

  ‘No trickery at all,’ says the miller, smiling his wolf’s smile. ‘Do you not recognise your child? She is altered, true. She has been put back together differently, shall we say.’

  He told them then, the wedding party, about how little Elspeth had been washed downstream. She was dead by the time she reached the mill, of course. At this Bella lets out an animal wail. The miller finds her gaze and she feels the black, choking water closing over her own head. The utter darkness. The end of everything.

  ‘She came to rest beneath the wheel. I rescued her but it was too late. That lovely girl . . .’ His heavy sigh gusts through the company; hair rises on pale necks. ‘I laid her out on the mill floor, tried to put the pieces back together. Do you not recognise her?’

  The miller steps back and indicates the harp with a flourish. He trails a dirt-engrained finger down the elegant white curve of it, plucks the glinting strings. The song becomes more fevered: ‘Killed. Killed. KILLED!’

  Bella feels an answering chill travelling up her spine.

  ‘Do none of you recognise the graceful arch of her backbone? The soft strength of her golden hair?’

  The father barks a sound of utter disbelief. He is wordless with grief. There is the dangerous ring of drawn steel, but the miller just laughs.

  ‘From the remains of your daughter I have crafted something as indestructible as it is beautiful. Her bones, her hair, her very voice. A work of art.’ His gaze swings back to Bella. She is impaled on it. ‘Your sister has a story to tell, a song to sing. I’m sure you’ll recognise it!’

  With the last laugh, the miller sweeps away out of the door, his cloak swirling around him, black as grave dirt. The bride stares at the bone harp. The strings ripple again, preparing to give voice to her guilt, and Bella screams a denial. He father turns on her as her mother, sobb
ing, falls to the ground.

  ‘What have you done?’he roars.

  Bella is in the centre of the circle. Bella and the bone harp and a ring of cold steel. Her father’s men-at-arms are ready with their weapons, awaiting the word. The harp strings shiver. ‘Sister . . . sister . . . how could you?’

  There is only one thing she can do. The bride bursts through the circle and races for the door. She has a feeling the miller will be waiting for her.

  Another contraction takes hold of me: a great seismic rush sweeping me away. I do not have the energy to move, but double up where I sit, gripping the chair as if both of us are being hurled across the universe. Stars ignite behind my eyelids. Bone, hair, voice – a union of all the parts of me, all the parts of Reuben, growing inside me. Our baby.

  After an eternity, my body starts to relax. The contractions are coming thick and fast now. I need help. I need to find Mac.

  Mac

  It’s a fallacy that the skull, when exposed to heat, bursts open like a boiled egg in a microwave. It’s nonsense, and I’m sure Anita would back me up on this. Merely one of those urban myths that’s arisen from the aftermath of fires. The skulls of burn victims quickly become brittle from the heat – they only have the thinnest covering of tissue – and so are easily broken. Like hearts.

  Jim’s toolbox lives in the miller’s office, a small, square room just big enough for the miller. It has a half-door, like a stable, and an old-fashioned sloping desk that may have belonged to some long-dead schoolmarm. Lifting the desk lid takes you back through two world wars to a less complicated era; all those old ledgers, invoice books, dry fountain pens and bottles of ink. You’ll find foam pads and stamps that bear the legend Jim Muir: Purveyor of Fine Oatmeal. There are drawing pins and rubber bands, rolls and rolls of fine jute string for tying up sacks, and Jim’s very own Swiss army knife, right where he left it.