Bone Deep

by Sandra Ireland

  It’s only Arthur. I stand aside to let him in, automatically scanning for suspicious packages. He appears to be cake-free, for once. Arthur’s white bakery boxes are piling up on the kitchen table. One is empty, the others are half-grazed, full of crumbs and cake corners, where I’ve done a Mary Berry on them, sampling bits and discarding them, unimpressed. The last box has to go. It’s full of something that stinks of vanilla and I’ve had to tape the lid shut. The smell of vanilla makes me want to retch.

  Max and Jethro pile in too, claws clicking on the hard floors. They smell of earth and cow dung. Under the table, Floss growls, as if she just cannot be bothered with them. Arthur raises his eyebrows.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Ask your mother!’

  ‘What has she done now?’ A flicker of fear passes across his face.

  I don’t answer straight away.

  ‘She’s losing the plot. Seriously. Started up the mill in the middle of the night. We thought it was an earthquake.’ I glance at the little spaniel. ‘No wonder Floss has adopted me!’

  Arthur sighs. He pinches and rubs the bridge of his nose, so fiercely that he’s in danger of dislodging his glasses. ‘Ma is eccentric. I’ve learned to live with it, but I can see how she might come across as . . . odd. She likes to keep the mill ticking over.’ He sighs. ‘If it was left to me I’d lock it up and throw away the key.’

  The spectacles fall back into place, framing the fear I can see in his bright blue eyes. I pick up the huge key from beside the kettle. ‘Here. Knock yourself out. Do us all a favour.’

  He recoils from it. ‘Shit. She went away and left it unlocked?’

  ‘She seemed really out of it.’ Seeing his expression, I take pity on him. ‘Come on. You need to walk this out. Walking is the number-one cure for whatever ails you.’

  He gives a humourless laugh. ‘That’s what I was just doing, but I couldn’t find Floss.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s good to have some human company.’ I can’t believe I just said that. I tweak at the soft leg of my pyjamas. ‘Give me two minutes to get my jeans on.’ Definitely not like me.

  We walk to the millpond, falling easily into step. The track is still soft and damp, but the trees are mesmerising, new leaves like sparkly, bouncy hair against a bright sky. The last time I’d looked up at the sky it was littered with stars. Things seem so different in the daylight. Normal.

  ‘My mother is worried about you,’ Arthur says.

  That gives me a warm feeling, that someone is worried about me. ‘She’s given me a week off.’

  ‘She’s far too easy on you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You should come and work for me. I’m a slave driver.’

  I glance at him and laugh. The sun has turned him all golden: hair, specs, skin. He doesn’t look like a slave driver. He just looks kind and healthy and full of life.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ I’m grinning at him. He makes me want to smile. ‘You’re as soft as your mother!’

  He’s looking straight ahead, adopting a mock-serious expression. ‘Don’t underestimate the soft people. The soft, silent people are the ones who think.’

  ‘So what are you thinking now?’ I like his profile, the frankness of his mouth. He doesn’t smile unless I smile, as if he’s tuning into me.

  ‘I think you’re enjoying my company.’

  ‘It’s a walk, Arthur. Don’t flatter yourself.’

  We both chuckle at that, and then he gets serious again.

  ‘Have you heard from . . . he who shall not be named?’

  Thoughts of Reuben block out the sun for a bit, and I shake my head. ‘No, not since Jane whisked him home. She’s phoned with updates a couple of times, but no, I haven’t had any contact.’

  I want to tell him about my final visit to the hospital, the day Jane headed home to get clean clothes. I was yearning for clarity, a sense of direction, but Reuben’s sister was there, and a friend who was giving her a lift. There was way too much talk about bus timetables and visiting hours, and all the time I was searching Reuben’s face for clues. How I longed to see that special warmth in his eyes, the fire that kindles just for me. But he was cool, polite.

  At one point Laura got up to go to the loo and the friend decided to grab a coffee. Alone at last, I turned to Reuben to say all the things that were crowding my head. They came out in a mad, breathless rush. I miss you. I love you. When you’re well, we can get back together . . . and he’s holding up his hand. I’m forced to look at his palm and that thread work of little lines I like to kiss. He’s saying things too, all in a rush. Things have changed. We need to cool it. I still value your friendship, but . . .

  We’ve reached the millpond. We pause and I stare down into the black water, half-afraid of what I might see below the surface.

  ‘The last time I saw him, he said he valued my friendship.’

  ‘Um . . . friendship can be undervalued,’ Arthur says carefully.

  I glare at him. ‘This guy has been fucking me for months and he dares to label me a friend?’

  There’s an awkward pause. Arthur shrugs. He’s gazing at the far bank, where two mallards are engaged in a noisy exchange. There’s a lot of flapping and the water sprays silver from beneath their wings.

  ‘Maybe that’s the answer you’ve been looking for.’

  I fold my arms across the lost place. ‘I wasn’t looking for answers.’

  ‘You didn’t want to make a decision, but you must have wondered how it was all going to end?’

  I glare at him. ‘Who says it’s ended? Things are tricky right now. He needs some space, and so do I.’

  ‘But he refers to you as a “friend”, and that pisses you off.’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know what to think!’ I stalk off, waving a hand at Arthur, who follows in my wake. ‘Change the subject.’

  I feel suddenly weary. The lack of honesty in my life is weighing me down like a waterlogged winter coat. I am buttoned up and bound, plodding along the same old pathway, which never seems to end. I cannot work out how to throw off the coat, so instead I just burrow in deeper. Change the subject.

  ‘So what do you want to talk about?’ Arthur says, which isn’t particularly helpful.

  ‘Can we narrow it down?’ My words sound unreasonably snappy. I let my breath out in a sigh. ‘Let’s talk about you. Tell me what happened – here. What happened to your dad?’

  Arthur’s face is carefully neutral. The path is narrow; he’s looking straight ahead, and I’m walking slightly behind, so I can’t really observe his expression, other than the tensing of his jaw. His voice is tight too, as if it doesn’t want to give too much away.

  ‘He was miller here for years, and his father before him. A real family-run business. I always assumed I would follow him.’

  ‘But there was an accident?’

  ‘Did my mother tell you? She doesn’t usually speak about it.’

  I try to recall if she had spoken of it. ‘Maybe not. I think you mentioned something, in the hospital. Was it an accident?’

  ‘Yes, a fatal accident, in the mill. About five years ago now.’

  I’m not quite sure what to say. I never know how to be tactful in these conversations.

  ‘What was he like, your dad?’

  Arthur’s face softens. We have passed the millpond without incident. I want to tell him about what I thought I saw. I want to share my panic, but that would mean revealing too much about myself. What would he think of me, wandering out in the moonlight to write poetry in my pyjamas?

  I’m no longer sure where we are. The path is overgrown and the scent of the undergrowth fills me. It’s green and wild and secret, and somewhere up ahead the dogs are crashing around in it.

  ‘This is the way to the weir. Do you want to go on?’

  I still feel exhausted, but I nod anyway. ‘Your father?’

  Arthur smiles, and we move on in single file. His voice floats back to me, warm with affection. ‘He wa
s a very gentle man, the sort of man you could always rely on. People talk about “rocks”, don’t they? Well, Dad was a rock, a big old river boulder, sitting in the stream, with all the crap of the day flowing past him. Maybe even with a bird or two on his head!’

  ‘Dippers. Dippers like to sit on big rocks.’

  Mac had pointed out the dippers earlier, big dark birds, bobbing into the water to fish. Their Gaelic name means ‘blacksmiths of the stream’, she’d said, and I’d remembered that.

  ‘They remind me of little fairy folk, the dippers, ducking and diving,’ I say. ‘And the heron, the one that sits on the far bank of the pond – he’s like a proper old fisherman!’

  I realise Arthur’s managed to body-swerve any mention of his father’s accident. I suppose you don’t want to dwell on it, or share the nitty-gritty with a stranger, but like a third-rate detective my curiosity has been roused.

  Arthur flashes a grin back at me. ‘See, you’re starting to feel at home!’

  Do I? Do I feel at home here? Walking behind Arthur, focusing on nothing but the track and his back, the damp at the hem of his jeans and the snag of the brambles and that green, summery smell – it feels good. Peaceful. As I examine that, he starts talking about something else: fairies and myths and old stories.

  ‘Wait a second . . . what stories?’

  He pauses and I half-collide with him. He’s very tall close up, and this feels oddly intimate. ‘The stories Ma is writing – they’re all based on local legends.’

  ‘All of them? Even the one about the two sisters?’

  ‘The two girls did actually exist. They lived in a castle a few miles from here – Castle Binnorie. It’s ruined now, but if you follow the course of the burn out to sea, you’ll see it on the headland.’

  ‘Whoa.’ I pull up sharp. ‘So what are you saying? It’s not just a story?’

  ‘Oh it is a story – myth, folklore, whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘But with real people. In a real location. That sounds like more than “just a story”.’

  ‘Most stories are attached to reality somehow.’ He pauses to look at me, the ghost of a smile playing around his lips. ‘Think of . . .’ His eyes search for inspiration among the leaves. ‘Killiecrankie. The Soldier’s Leap.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that counts as history.’

  ‘Okay. How about the Loch Ness Monster.’

  ‘Superstition. Fantasy.’

  ‘But a real place.’

  ‘True.’ I consider this. ‘Fantasy embroidered around a familiar location.’

  ‘But is it fantasy? You can’t say the monster doesn’t exist just because you haven’t seen it. You can say you don’t believe in it.’

  ‘You mean like if a tree falls in the woods with no one there to hear it does it still make a sound? That kind of thing makes my head hurt.’

  Arthur laughs, pulls the blossom from a weed as he brushes past it. I’m still thinking, even though my head hurts.

  ‘So “The Cruel Sister” is fact-based fiction set in a real-life setting . . . and . . . and I went into the mill last night. There’s writing on the wall. I saw Bella’s name.’

  ‘Yup, this is the very mill that features in the story,’ Arthur says, bringing me back. ‘Don’t even ask me about the miller. It’s a spine-tingler. I don’t want to spoil it for you if you haven’t got to the end yet!’

  But my spine is already tingling. I’m viewing a scary movie through my fingers, and I can’t seem to look away.

  Mac

  May

  Mint is a great balm for the tummy. I have three different varieties in the kitchen garden, all contained in pots of various sizes. You cannot let mint loose; it seeds itself with great abandon and spreads like a virus, but at this time of year the new growth is quite manageable and full of flavour. I’ve decided to make mint tea for Lucie.

  I harvest a few fresh sprigs, the sharp scent taking me right back to my youth and those chewy white spearmint toffees I used to buy with my pocket money. The fragrance alone is enough to perk up the soul, and I hope it might work on the poor girl. I feel she’s been very out of sorts lately.

  Maybe I’m overreacting, of course. I’ve been feeling very down myself, if I’m honest. I don’t like the dark turn my thoughts have been taking, and I can’t seem to shake off the gloom. I’m not sure what’s triggered this. Memories seem to have surfaced from nowhere, and all my fevered scribblings about the two sisters . . . I feel like a door has been unlocked. People never stop to consider how the consequences of their actions will reverberate through time: Bella and little Elspeth. And that woman . . . I haven’t thought of her in so long, but her name keeps floating up from the depths of my consciousness. Anna Madigan. The name is etched on my brain these days, and every time I catch sight of it the green-eyed monster rolls over in its sleep.

  As if she knows I’m thinking of her, Lucie appears in the kitchen doorway. She still looks cold and grumpy, even though I’ve put the electric heater on in the study. I had suggested she do a little light hoeing in the kitchen garden instead of sitting at the keyboard (we used to have a chap from the village but he was hopeless), but she just glared at me. She’s become quite difficult lately – either too tired, too poorly, or simply not in the mood for anything. Back in January, when she’d turned up at my door with her life in a wheeled suitcase, she’d seemed so meek. I suppose this is what happens when you get to know people better. You have to learn to live with their flaws.

  We did have a small set-to, the day after I set the mill going in the middle of the night. I can’t imagine what she must have thought. Probably thinks I’m going doolally. She’d brought Floss back, quite late in the afternoon. I hadn’t been expecting her and when I opened the front door there she was, all in black like some sort of exorcist, with the huge iron mill key raised in one hand like a crucifix. You forgot something. And please keep the dog under control – she’s waking me up in the night and she cries like a baby and it’s freaking me out.

  Quite overwrought, the poor thing.

  I’d brought her in and sat her in the front room. Floss folded up in front of the cold hearth and judged me sadly. ‘My dear,’ I’d said, ‘you look quite peaky.’ Can I get you anything? I’d reached out a hand to her and noticed the faint tinge of blue sparkle still sticking to my skin. I’d rooted through the fresh-milled flour the previous night, to make sure that Anna Madigan’s love token had been pulverised to dust. I saw Lucie edge away from the sparkle, like a wary Jack Russell about to bite. I waited for questions but none came.

  Instead she said, ‘I went into the mill after you left. I had a little look round. I saw Bella’s name on the wood, and the flower drawing.’

  ‘There are lots of names in there,’ I told her. ‘Arthur’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather, they all signed their names for posterity. Some of the millwrights too, and the farmers. Even the customers! If you look very closely you’ll see our initials, Jim’s and mine, enclosed within a heart. Of course, we were very young –’

  ‘Bella,’ Lucie snapped. ‘Bella – written on the wall. Is that the Bella in the Cruel Sister story?’

  ‘There are many Bellas. It’s a common Scots name, short for Isabella –’

  ‘Just tell me!’

  ‘It has never been authenticated and it’s a very old story –’

  ‘YOU ARE A HISTORIAN.’

  ‘Sometimes . . .’ I’d picked my words carefully. ‘Sometimes the past is reflected in the present. We see little glints of it now and then, like a broken mirror or . . .’ I gesticulated with my hands. Miniscule filaments of crystal blinked in the lamplight. ‘We are not separate from it. All that has gone on before is just a glint away.’

  ‘Beyond the civilised circle of light.’

  The phrase sounded like an accusation, and on the cold hearthrug the dog growled.

  I come to her now with the mint tea steaming in a glass mug.

  ‘What’s this? Are you trying to poison me?’
<
br />   I chuckle. Always so prickly! I press the drink into her hands. ‘You keep saying your tummy’s unsettled.’

  ‘Indigestion, from your son’s pastries.’ She sips the tea and grimaces, whether from the heat or the taste I can’t tell.

  ‘How are you getting on, in the cottage?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Do you find it a little lonely? You said you were a tad uneasy. “Freaking out”, is the phrase you used, I think.’

  She looks at me warily. ‘I overreacted. I’m fine.’

  ‘You could always stay here. You could have Arthur’s old room, as long as you don’t mind model aeroplanes.’

  She looks appalled. ‘No. I like my own space. No offence.’

  I recognise my own words played back to me. Touché. ‘Well, the offer is there should you ever want it.’ I notice she’s clutching my notebook in her hand. ‘Which bit have you been working on?’

  She remains silent.

  I ease the notebook from her cold fingers, and motion to the table. We pull out chairs and sit, and I fish my spectacles from the breast pocket of my blouse. ‘These are not children’s fairy stories, Lucie. We must record them faithfully, whether we like the content or not.’ Letting my specs slip just a tad, I observe her reaction over the rim of them. ‘Myth reflects the human condition. Jealousy, betrayal, revenge . . . it’s all there. We cannot escape it. These old stories sometimes make sense of the things we can’t; they hold up a picture of ourselves.’

  ‘There’s something not right with the picture,’ Lucie whispers. A solitary tear slips down her nose. I suppose she is thinking of her mysterious gentleman caller. Not for the first time, I wonder what she’s hiding and why she seems so agitated about the Cruel Sister story. Have I hit a nerve? The idea gives me a curious sense of power over her.