by Lucy Foley
I should talk to Will about the note. Now is the moment, if I’m ever going to do it. But I’ve already had one confrontation this evening – with Charlie – and I can’t quite bring myself to face the thing head-on, to plough ahead and raise it. And it’s probably nothing. I’m 99 per cent sure, anyway. Maybe 98.
The door to the bathroom opens. Will steps into the room, towel knotted around his waist. Even though I have just had him I’m momentarily distracted by the sight of his body: the planes and ridges of it, the muscles corded in stomach, arms and legs.
‘What are you doing still up?’ he asks. ‘We should get some rest. Big day tomorrow.’
I turn my back to him and drop my robe to the floor, sure I can feel his eyes on me. Enjoying the power of it. Then I lift the cover and slip into the bed and as I do my bare legs make contact with something. Solid and cold, the consistency of dead flesh. It seems to yield as I push my feet unwittingly into it and yet at the same time to wrap itself around my legs.
‘Jesus Christ! Jesus Fucking Christ!’
I leap from the bed, trip, half sprawl on the floor.
Will stares at me. ‘Jules? What is it?’
I can hardly answer him at first, too scared and repulsed by what I just felt. The panic has risen into my throat in a choke. The shock reverberates through me, deep and visceral and animal. It was the stuff of a nightmare – the sort of thing you dream about finding in your bed, only to wake in a chill sweat and realise it was all in your imagination. But this was real. I can still feel the cold imprint of it against my legs.
‘Will,’ I say, finally finding my voice. ‘There’s something – in the bed. Under the covers.’
He strides over in two great bounds, takes the duvet in both hands and rips it away. I can’t help screaming. There, in the middle of the mattress, sprawls the huge black body of some marine creature, tentacles stretching in all directions.
Will leaps back. ‘What the fuck?’ He sounds more angry than frightened. He says it again, as though the thing on the bed might somehow answer for itself: ‘What the fuck …?’
The smell of the sea, of briny, rotting things, is overpowering now, emanating from that black mass on the bed.
And then quickly, recovering much more rapidly than I do, Will moves closer to it again. As he puts out a hand I shout, ‘Don’t touch it!’ But he has already grasped the tentacles, given them a yank. They come free, the thing seems to break apart – horribly, sickeningly. It was there while we fucked, waiting for us beneath the covers …
Will gives a short, hard laugh, entirely without humour. ‘Look – it’s only seaweed. It’s bloody seaweed!’
He holds it aloft. I lean closer. He’s right. It’s the stuff I’ve seen strewn along the beaches here, great thick, dark ropes of it washed up by the waves. Will tosses it on to the floor.
Gradually, the whole spectacle loses its macabre, monstrous aspect and is reduced to a horrible mess. I become aware of the indignity of my position, sprawled as I am, naked, upon the floor. I feel my heartbeat slow. I breathe more easily.
Except … how did it come to be here in the first place? Why is it here?
Someone has done this to us. Someone has brought this in, hidden it beneath the duvet, knowing that we would only find it once we got into bed.
I turn to Will. ‘Who could have done this?’
He shrugs. ‘Well, I have my suspicions.’
‘What? About who?’
‘It was a prank we used to play on the younger boys at school. We’d go down via the cliff path and collect seaweed on the beaches – as much as we could carry. Then we’d hide it in their beds. So my guess is Johnno or Duncan – possibly all of the guys. They probably thought it was funny.’
‘You’d call this a prank? We’re not at school, Will, it’s the night before our wedding! What the fuck?’ In a way, my anger is a relief.
Will shrugs. ‘It’s not a prank for you, it’s for me. You know, for old times’ sake. They wouldn’t have meant you to get upset—’
‘I’m going to go and get them all up now, find out which one of them it was. Show them exactly how funny I think it is.’
‘Jules.’ Will takes hold of my shoulders. And then, soothingly: ‘Look, if you were to do that … well, you might say things you’d regret. It would spoil things for tomorrow, wouldn’t it? It could change the whole dynamic.’
I do, sort of, see what he means. God, he’s always so reasonable – sometimes infuriatingly so, always taking the measured approach. I look at the black mass, now on the floor. It’s hard to believe that some darker message wasn’t intended by it.
‘Look,’ Will says gently. ‘We’re both tired. It’s been a long day. Let’s not worry about it now. We can get a new sheet from the spare room.’
The spare room was intended for Will’s parents. They baulked at the outlandish idea of actually staying on the island. Will didn’t seem surprised: ‘My father’s never been particularly impressed by anything I’ve done – getting married is undoubtedly no exception.’ He seemed bitter. He doesn’t talk about his father much – which paradoxically gives me the impression that he’s a bigger influence upon my husband than he likes to admit.
‘Get a new duvet, too,’ I tell Will now. I’m half tempted to say I want to swap to the other room. But that would be irrational, and I pride myself on being the opposite.
‘Sure.’ Will gestures to the seaweed. ‘And I’ll sort out this, too – I’ve dealt with much worse, trust me.’
On the programme Will has escaped from wolves and been swarmed by vampire bats – though he’s never far from the help of the crew – so this must all seem a little pathetic to him. A bit of seaweed on the sheets is hardly a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.
‘I’ll have a word with the guys tomorrow morning,’ he says. ‘Tell them they’re fucking idiots.’
‘OK,’ I say. He’s so good at providing comfort. He’s so – well, there’s only really one word for it – perfect.
And yet, in this moment, with particularly nasty timing, the words on that horrible little note surface.
Not the man he says he is … cheat … liar …
Don’t marry him.
‘A good night’s sleep,’ Will says, soothingly. ‘That’s what we need.’
I nod.
But I don’t think I’m going to sleep a wink.
AOIFE
The Wedding Planner
There’s a noise outside. It’s a strange noise, a keening. It sounds more human than animal – but at the same time it doesn’t sound entirely human either. In our bedroom, Freddy and I look at one another. All the guests have gone to bed too, about half an hour ago now. I thought they would never get tired. We had to wait until the bitter end in case they needed anything of us. We listened to the drumming from the dining room, the chanting. Freddy, who has a little schoolboy Latin, could translate the thing they were chanting: ‘If I cannot move heaven, I shall raise hell.’ I felt the gooseflesh rise on my skin at that.
They’re like overgrown boys, the ushers. I’d say they lack the innocence of boys: but some boys aren’t ever really innocent. What I mean is that as grown men they should know better. And there is a pack feeling about them, like dogs that might behave well on their own but, once all together, don’t have their own minds. I’ll have to keep my eye on them tomorrow, make sure they don’t get carried away. It is my experience that some of the smartest affairs, populated by the most well-heeled and upstanding guests, have been those that have got most out of control. I organised a wedding in Dublin that contained half Ireland’s political elite – even the Taoiseach was there – only for things to come to blows between the groom and father-in-law before the first dance.
Here there’s the added danger of the whole island. The wildness of this place gets under your skin. These guests will feel themselves far from the normal moral codes of society, safe from the prying eyes of others. These men are ex-public schoolboys. They’ve spent much of their li
ves being forced to follow a strict set of rules that probably didn’t end with their leaving school: choices around what university to attend, what job to do, what sort of house to live in. In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.
‘I’ll go,’ I say.
‘It’s not safe,’ Freddy says. ‘I’ll come with you.’ I tell Freddy I’ll be fine. To reassure him I tell him I’ll pick up the poker from beside the fire on my way out. I’m the braver of the two of us, I know. I don’t say this with any great pride. It’s simply that when the worst has happened, you rather lose your fear of anything else.
I step into the night, appreciating the quality of the darkness, the velvet black as it folds me into itself. Any light from the Folly makes very little impact upon it, though the kitchen is aglow – and also one of the upstairs windows, the room the soon-to-be-married couple are occupying. Well, I know what’s keeping them up. We heard the rhythmic shudder of the bed against the floorboards.
I won’t use the torch yet. It will make me stupid in the darkness. I stand here, listening intently. All I can make out at first is the slam of the water on the rocks and an unfamiliar, susurrating sound which I finally identify as the marquee, the fabric rustling in the gentle breeze some fifty yards away.
And then the other noise begins again. I’m better able to recognise it, now. It’s the sound of someone sobbing. Man or woman, though, it’s impossible to tell. I turn in its direction and as I do I think I catch a shimmer of movement out of the corner of my eye, in the direction of the outbuildings behind the Folly. I don’t know how I saw it, it being so dark. But it is hardwired into us, I think, into our animal selves. Our eyes are alert to any disturbance, any change in the pattern of the darkness.
It might have been a bat. Sometimes in the early evening you can see them flit above in the twilight, so quick you’re not sure you’ve seen them. But I think it was bigger. I’m sure it was a person, the same person who sits weeping cloaked in darkness. Even when I came here all those years ago, even though the island was inhabited then, there were ghost stories. The grieving women mourning their husbands, brutally slain. The voices from the bog, denied their proper burial. At the time we scared ourselves silly with them. And in spite of myself I feel it now, the sensation of my skin shrinking over my bones.
‘Hello?’ I call. The sound stops, abruptly. When there is no answer I click my torch on. I swing the beam this way and that.
The beam catches on something as I move it in a slow arc. I train it on the same spot, and guide it up the figure that stares back at me. The beam marks out the dark wild hair, the gleaming eyes. Like a being straight from folklore – the Pooka: the phantom goblin, portent of impending doom.
In spite of myself I take a step back, the torch beam wavering. But gradually, recognition dawns. It’s only the best man, slumped against the wall of one of the outbuildings.
‘Who’s there?’ His voice sounds slurred and hoarse.
‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Aoife.’
‘Oh, Aoife. Come to tell me it’s time for lights out? Time to get into bed like a good little boy?’ He gives me a crooked grin. But it’s a half-hearted affair, and I think those are tear tracks that catch in the beam.
‘It’s not safe for you to go wandering around the outbuildings,’ I say, all practicality. There’s old farm machinery in there that could cut a person in half. ‘Especially without a torch,’ I add. And especially when you’re as drunk as you are, I think. Although, oddly enough, I feel as though I am protecting the island from him – rather than the other way round.
He stands up, walks toward me. He’s a big man, drunk and more besides – I catch a sickly-sweet vegetable waft of weed. I take another step away from him and realise that I’m gripping the poker hard. Then he grins, showing crooked teeth. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Time for Johnny-boy to go to bed. Think I had a bit too much of the old, you know.’ He mimes drinking from a bottle, then smoking. ‘Always makes me feel a bit off, having too much of both together. Thought I was fucking seeing things.’
I nod, even though he can’t see me. So did I.
I watch as he turns on his heel and lurches his way towards the Folly. The forced good humour didn’t convince me for a second. Despite the grin he seemed caught between miserable and terrified. He looked like a man who had seen a ghost.
The wedding day
HANNAH
The Plus-One
When I wake, my head aches. I think of all that champagne – then the vodka. I check the alarm clock: 7 a.m. Charlie’s fast asleep, flat on his back. I heard him come in last night, take his clothes off. I waited for the stumbling, the swearing, but he seemed surprisingly in control of his faculties.
‘Han,’ he whispered to me, as he got into bed. ‘I left the drinking game. I only did the one shot.’ That made me feel a bit less hostile towards him. Then I wondered where else he’d been, for all that time. With whom. I remembered his flirting with Jules. I remembered how Johnno had asked if they’d slept together – and how they never answered.
So I didn’t reply. I pretended to be asleep.
But I’ve woken up feeling turned on. I had some pretty crazy dreams. I think the vodka was partly responsible. But also the memory of Will’s eyes on me at the beginning of the evening. Then talking in the cave with Olivia at the end: sitting so close in the dark with the water lapping at our feet and only the candle for light, passing the bottle between us. Secret, somehow sensual. I found myself hanging on her every word, the images she painted for me vivid in the darkness. As though it was me up against the wall, my skirt pushed up over my hips, someone’s mouth upon me. The guy might have been a dickhead but the sex sounded pretty hot. And it made me remember the slightly dangerous thrill of sleeping with someone unknown, where you’re not anticipating their every move.
I turn to Charlie. Perhaps now is the time to break our sex drought, regain that lost intimacy. I sneak a hand beneath the covers, grazing the springy hair that covers his chest, moving my hand lower—
Charlie makes a sleepy, surprised noise. And then, his voice claggy with sleep: ‘Not now, Han. Too tired.’
I pull my hand away, stung. ‘Not now’: like I’m an irritation. Tired because he stayed up late last night doing God knows what, when on the boat over here he spoke of this as a weekend for us. When he knows how raw I feel at the moment. I have a sudden frightening urge to pick up the hardback on the nightstand and hit him over the head with it. It’s alarming, the rush of anger. It feels like I might have been harbouring it for a while.
Then a sneaking thought. I allow myself to wonder what it must be like for Jules, to wake up next to Will. I heard them, last night – everyone in the Folly must have. I think again of the strength of Will’s arms as he lifted me out of the boat yesterday. I think, too, of how I caught him looking at me last night with that strange, questioning look. The sense of power, feeling his eyes on me.
Charlie murmurs in his sleep and I catch a waft of sour morning breath. I can’t imagine Will having bad breath. Suddenly, I feel it’s important to remove myself from this bedroom, from these thoughts.
There’s no sound of movement inside the Folly, so I think I’m the first one up.
There must be quite a breeze today, as I can hear it whistling about the old stones of the place as I creep down the stairs, and every so often the windowpanes rattle in their frames as though someone’s just smacked a palm against them. I wonder if we had the best of the weather yesterday. Jules won’t like that. I tiptoe into the kitchen.
Aoife’s standing there in a crisp white shirt and slacks, a clipboard in her hand, looking as if she’s been up for hours. ‘Morning,’ she says – and I sense she is scrutinising my face. ‘How are you today?’ I get the impression Aoife doesn’t miss a lot, with those bright, assessing eyes of hers. She’s quietly rather beautiful. I sense that she makes an effort to underplay it but it shines through. Beautifully shaped dark eyebrow
s, grey-green eyes. I’d kill for that sort of natural, Audrey Hepburn-esque elegance, those cheekbones.
‘I’m good,’ I say. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise anyone else was up.’
‘We started at the crack of dawn,’ she says. ‘With the big day today.’
I’d practically forgotten about the actual wedding. I wonder how Jules is feeling this morning. Nervous? I can’t imagine her being nervous about anything.
‘Of course. I was going to go for a walk. Bit of a sore head.’
‘Well,’ she says, with a smile. ‘Safest to walk to the crest of the island, following the path past the chapel, leaving the marquee on the other side. That should keep you out of the bog. And take some wellies from by the door – you need to be careful to stick to the drier parts, or you’ll find yourself in the turf. There’s some signal up there too, if you need to make a phone call.’
A phone call. Oh God – the kids! With a swoop of guilt, I realise they have totally slipped my mind. My own children. I’m shocked by how much this place has already made me forget myself.
I head outside and find the path, or what remains of it. It’s not quite as easy as Aoife made out: you can just about see where it must have been trodden into existence, where the grass hasn’t grown quite as well as elsewhere. As I walk the clouds scurry overhead, whirling out towards the open sea. It’s definitely breezier today, and more overcast, though every so often the sun bursts dazzlingly through the cloud. The huge marquee, on the left of me, rustles in the wind as I pass it. I could sneak inside and have a look. But I am drawn towards the graveyard, instead, to the right of me beyond the chapel. Maybe this is a reflection of my state of mind at this time of year, the morbid mood that descends on me every June.
Wandering among the markers I see several very distinctive Celtic crosses, but I can also make out faint images of anchors, flowers. Most of the stones are so ancient that you can hardly read the writing on them any more. Even if you could, it’s not in English: Gaelic, I suppose. Some are broken or worn down until they have no real shape at all. Without really thinking what I am doing I touch a hand to the one nearest to me and feel where the rough stone has been smoothed by wind and water over the decades. There are a few that look a bit newer, perhaps from shortly before the islanders left for good. But most are pretty overgrown with weeds and mosses, as though they haven’t been tended for a while.