The Harpy

by Megan Hunter

  Then: it seems, for a moment, that none of it has happened. That I am at home, and my babies are with me. I am daydreaming, it seems, soaring now above church spires, building sites, playgrounds. I can see every detail, the stitching on clothes drying in gardens, the words on their labels. I can go on, glide over the sea, over boats, islands, towards an ever-shifting horizon, only distance, no time: only this.

  I open my eyes, grasping at myself, certain I will see something: creatures, scabs, appearing, growing. I look and look, searching my own body, every inch of it. There is nothing there.

  ~

  But in the middle of the night I do see, and laugh: it is happening now, as I always knew it would.

  I am her: I am here.

  ~

  IV

  ~

  I wake up with the feeling that I am being watched. I open my eyes and see the wall, the window still as a waiting animal, looking for me.

  The glass is broken, its crack a pattern, a message. I have given up trying to read it.

  ~

  I have been here for weeks, I think. Or: for a single day, the longest I have ever known. There has been knocking, and I have ignored it. More than this: I hid.

  I found a hiding place where I could keep telling it – my story, her story. The way we ended up.

  ~

  A truck moves past on the main road, so heavy that the floor shakes. But it is far away: it won’t come here.

  I roll onto my side, lift my neck. Somewhere behind me, my back lays out its separate pains, a rustling complaint. I lie back down.

  ~

  This daylight is not enough: I want more, the strongest I can find, the danger of bright sunshine.

  I sit up, careful with myself – a memory of something, post-surgery – but this time, instead of being cut, my body is one. My breasts meet my stomach, my stomach meets my legs.

  They greet each other, as though bowing, and I see it now: the way clothes kept everything apart.

  ~

  I manage to stand, my feet light on the ground, curled nails touching the slip-shine of biscuit wrappers, crisp packets. I lower my head to the floor and taste them, taking out the last crumbs with my tongue.

  ~

  I think that walls don’t matter as much any more. I hold myself on the edge of the window, savour the new morning airs. Soil: meat and burning. Grass: mint-cool.

  I open my mouth wide: I can keep it like this now, I realize. No one will tell me to close it.

  ~

  There are so many greens, each one like a face, like a body lying down in pleasure. Neon, lime, emerald, sage and teal and jade.

  There is the field, the wood. These are my places now.

  ~

  A shout from somewhere, far into the village. A young voice, high and wanting. A certain feeling with this, a pain or a touch, but it seems that all feelings are the same.

  She – I – wasted so much time trying to tell the difference.

  ~

  The stairs now, missing the gaps where holes invite me in, my body easier, getting used to it. I go to the garden, one movement, not stamping the air down like I used to. Letting it carry me.

  Every cloud is clearing, I can see. I can see so much. If I close my eyes, there is a map of everything, the whole world laid out, piece by piece. I could move myself towards it. But I will stay. Look down at myself. This is enough.

  ~

  The way it feels to grow again: a shooting across the heart, like a rock falling from space, dissolving between my bones.

  I could make a study of myself, show it to everyone. Say who was right and who was wrong. Which writer-man said I would be repulsive, dressed in rags – I am dressed in nothing! – or seated on a throne.

  ~

  It seems to be the afternoon: the sun is lower again and I believe this means afternoon. Bells somewhere nearby, chiming.

  I lie across the stubble grass of the field, feeling the burn of some distant planet turn my skin red and hard. Then I realize: I could be seen. From a plane or a drone or another secret way.

  I move, merge with the shadows, the undergrowth, the world a warm body beneath me.

  ~

  Something hard in the grass, wooden, smelling of decay, of the life that fills its splits. A tassel of frayed rope: a swing, I think.

  I watch a woodlouse crawl across rot, try to imagine the seat as it used to be, gliding into the sky.

  ~

  I go towards the trees: it is night. I am crawling now, can feel my stomach brushing against the grass. Tiger belly, low, furred, being touched by the earth.

  The greenness moves into me – the wet, the pathways, my hands in soil, the grass longer now, across my neck. It seeks my mouth.

  The dark is not as thick as I would like: it is pattered by light, grazed and smashed by it.

  Here, I think gravity will let me go at last. I will fall upwards and onwards: I will drop into the stars.

  ~

  I am hungry, I suspect. It is more complicated now. I listen. How many different kinds of hunger there are: scraping, whining, reaching.

  A thousand sensations, I see now, not just one.

  ~

  I think my new hands will be good for picking berries, and they are; some are low enough for me to close my teeth straight onto, others make me stand and pluck, my mouth sour-sweet with their coldness.

  I lean against a stump, rest my head against my shoulder. I am not cold, although I should be, and I am not afraid, which is the best thing, the night a glowing darkness ahead of me, trees shifting in the gloom.

  I can hide in my own body now. I can close my eyes.

  ~

  I am woken by a bear, I think, or an earthquake. Something that takes the early morning and snaps it in two. There was before the noise – full belly, soft rest – and afterwards, a threat that looms, giant, over everything.

  An engine. This is what it is, I realize, an engine not on the far-away road but much closer. Outside the house.

  Fear now, for the first time, clearer than anything else, a cool light that moves through me. I have to get away.

  ~

  I am close to the house in only a few movements, almost weightless now, able to leap huge distances, as in dreams, excitement and terror a single thing. My head moves from side to side, seeing everything. Every leaf on every tree, moving like a chorus, a glistening crowd.

  I know how to sneak around the corner so I am not seen, how to get to the road without any eyes on me. But something goes wrong. There are voices calling a name in the new day, this strain of a day, barely got going. It is too early: it is too soon.

  They can’t see me – not like this.

  The thought moves through my mind, whispered quietly, as though by someone else.

  ~

  I have to keep going, reach the road. I feel the weight on my back slowing me down. But my heart is beating faster than I have ever felt it before: it is a single sensation now, a hum, firing up, getting ready.

  I open my mouth, to let something out. The sound is sharp, biting, a ripping blare. I do it again.

  ~

  The engine is starting again now, it might be faster even than me. There is no time to get beyond, only this place, a church, a tower, bells that ring out. There are steps, easy for me, the engine stopping outside, the voices. I am above them, my breath coming ragged, in scraps.

  At the top, a door with a sign, a warning. I open it, open a path right onto the day. The whole village is laid out, just as I see it in my mind. The streets, the motorway, the creeping start of the town.

  I can see it all: the way I thought I would live. The people I spent my days with.

  Somewhere out there: her house. My house. Paddy. Ted. Jake.

  ~

  There are shouts downstairs, steps getting closer.

  And here: I am gripping the edge of the stone.

  I crouch. Pull my head in, look around. I move to the very edge, keeping my eyes fixed on the distance.

/>   I look towards the light.

  I take off.

  Thank You

  To the brilliant women who nurtured and helped to shape this book meticulously at every stage: my agent, Emma Paterson, and editors Charlie Greig, Sophie Jonathan, Katie Raissian and Elisabeth Schmitz. Team Harpy: what incredible luck to work with you all.

  To Camilla Elworthy, Lucy Scholes, Paul Baggaley, John Mark Boling, Deb Seager, Morgan Entrekin, Lisa Baker, Lesley Thorne, Anna Watkins and all at Picador, Grove Atlantic and Aitken Alexander who’ve shown such faith in my writing.

  To earliest readers and cherished friends: Rebecca Sollom and Kaddy Benyon. To a (shed) builder of the highest order: Nicholas Sabey. To my parents, Penny and Ernie, for their constant kindness and encouragement.

  Finally, to my husband and children, who do not feature in this book and yet helped me to write it in endless ways. With huge love and gratitude: Tim, Leo, Sylvie.

  ‘In The Harpy, a confession of a woman who refuses to inhabit the world under false pretences, Megan Hunter effortlessly compels us to feel both heartbreak and the momentary gratification of revenge. It is a book about love and betrayal – that between husband and wife, and parent and child – and it is devastating in its evocation of the expense and sometimes fatal strain of passion, grief, and rage.’

  Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut

  ‘The Harpy is brilliant. Hunter imbues the everyday with apocalyptic unease. A deeply unsettling, excellent read.’

  Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

  ‘A beautifully written, viscerally disturbing novel that turns the narrative of the cheated-on wife on its head.’

  Laura Kaye, author of English Animals

  ‘Both timeless and timely, The Harpy is a taut and lyrical novel about cosily calibrated lives coming spectacularly undone. Compulsively absorbing yet otherworldly, both a fever dream and a gorgeous and alarming howl of rage. Megan Hunter is a distinctive force of talent who portrays scenes of marriage, young parenthood, and mutable womanhood in fierce and fresh ways.’

  Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

  ‘In hungry, restless prose, Megan Hunter tears apart the seam between motherhood and the monstrous. She confronts the fear of female anger and asks us what happens when pain that has been swallowed through generations begins to rush to the surface.’

  Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater

  ‘Completely devastatingly brilliant.’

  Kyra Wilder, author of Little Bandaged Days

  ‘In The Harpy, Hunter has articulated female rage in a way that lives on in your bones and in your gut. A genuinely thrilling read, one long beautiful scream.’

  Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing

  ‘The Harpy is an almost perfect book. The premise is so simple, and the execution so flawless. It feels like a fairy tale not only because of its aura of mystery and the purity of its structure, but because the story itself is so fundamental you could imagine it being told and re-told in a thousand different forms. In a way, the book feels more discovered than crafted, like the manuscript ought to have been found locked in a trunk in an attic somewhere, or translated off an an old rock slab. I’ve talked about it more than anything else I’ve read so far this year: I love explaining the set-up to friends and watching their eyes widen. It’s so dark and so much fun.’

  Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person and Other Stories

  ‘Sentence after sentence made my skin bump. Not just with what the sentence said, but because the writing was so very, very good. It’s a brilliant piece of work.’

  Cynan Jones, author of Cove

  ‘It’s utterly compelling and I read it without pause. So precise and darkly truthful. I thought it succeeding in illuminating – with flair and originality – the damage done by betrayal.’

  Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky

  ‘Reading Megan’s fiction feels like her own description of donning glasses for the first time and looking again at an ordinary scene to see that it is not at all ordinary. Her use of language too is deceptive in that way – seemingly simple and yet so acute and complex. Reading The Harpy I was utterly spellbound. Her dark humour and pointillist prose puts her in league with Lydia Davis and Jenny Offil, masterfully rendering the emotional shock of a protagonist finding her life has become story.’

  Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy

  ‘A sharp, timely and darkly funny novel about maternal love and sacrifice, and the incandescent rage that festers beneath it. Hunter’s writing is beautiful and spare, uncanny and hilarious. I utterly loved it.’

  Luiza Sauma, author of Everything You Ever Wanted

  The Harpy

  Megan Hunter’s first novel, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US and Canada, and has been translated into eight languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Awards, longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Awards finalist and won the Foreword Reviews Editor’s Choice Award. Her writing has appeared in publications including the White Review, the TLS, Literary Hub and BOMB magazine. She lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, son and daughter.

  ALSO BY MEGAN HUNTER

  The End We Start From

  First published 2020 by Picador

  This electronic edition first published 2020 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5290-1024-4

  Copyright © Megan Hunter 2020

  Cover painting © Amy Judd

  Author photograph © Alex James

  Cover design: Lucy Scholes, Picador Art Department

  The right of Megan Hunter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The first extract here is from ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ by Hélène Cixous, translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs 1, no. 4 (1976): 875-93.

  Extract from The Aeneid translated by C. Day-Lewis reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the estate of C. Day-Lewis.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.picador.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.