Moon Island (39 page)

The thought of Ivy filled her mind. Ivy was so admirable and strong. She only felt angry with her because she was so effortlessly what she herself wanted to be. There was no space left to fill because Ivy already occupied it, yet it was exactly the shape in the world that May wanted too. Of course jealousy would make her angry. It wasn’t Ivy’s fault, how could it be? Weak tears collected in May’s eyes at the thought of how much she loved her. She pressed one finger into her eye socket and tried to lick the moisture off it. Her tongue was swollen and cracked.

Ivy would be worried. Ivy worried about her if she was an hour late coming home, although she pretended not to. ‘Don’t make me, you little bitch,’ she had snarled once, only once.

‘You don’t have to worry about me.’

‘Yes I do. Don’t you understand anything? There’s no one else to do it.’

It became suddenly of supreme, immense importance to relieve Ivy of anxiety. No one was going to come and get her out of here, not Ali or John or anyone else. She would have to extricate herself or die in a hole. Leave Ivy. Screw things up for her for good. The whispers would follow her.
Her mom died, then her kid sister… did you hear?
… Ivy would have to be harder and brighter and tougher than ever to make up for it.

Climb.

Climb out of here and crawl home.

There was the singing again. Fucking singing.
Ah, far away. Ah, far far away
. Only it was Lucas’s voice this time. Shit, it was a dream. What else could it be? Start climbing, okay?

The lip of the hole wasn’t so far away. Perhaps twice the height of her head. Forget the cage of pain and the thirst, which had become the size of another complete individual shrieking inside her. She reached up with clawed hands to the stones that jutted overhead. A knuckle of rock made a place to wedge her foot. Her face scraped against the sour earth.

Not that way. The better way was to press her back to the side of the hole and jam her feet against the opposite face. It hurt her legs and there was a hot pain stabbing through her braced shoulders. A shower of small stones and chunks of earth rattled down, but she was able to lever herself up by a foot, then a few more inches. The light overhead seemed to come no closer and the pain radiated from her shoulders to possess the rest of her. She braced herself once again and shuffled another step upwards, then one more. But the effort of holding her legs straight was too much. Her knees folded and she fell back down, the shock of the impact jarring a moan out of her.

She raised herself on all fours and looked upwards again. She saw that the only route was after all to climb, using the knobs and tiny protruding ledges of stone. This time she moved slowly, considering each hand and foothold. Whenever she achieved an upward lift she hung motionless for a long moment, her face pressed to the wall, conserving her tiny store of energy. For a long, agonising series of movements the sky seemed to come no closer.

Suddenly the bottom of the pit was far below, a considerable drop. If she fell now she would be badly hurt; to climb up again would be impossible. The lip of the hole was within reach of her fingers as they strained upwards. She brought her feet level and hung on with her fingertips. She could see nowhere that might offer the next foothold.

Up
. She focused on the thought with the last reserves of her willpower. There was a place about ten inches above her present toehold, no more than a shallow groove, but it might be enough. Cautiously she slid her right foot upwards, jammed it into the recess and tested her weight on it. Her fingers scrabbled higher and somehow the purchase held. Now her right hand found roots and stems growing beyond the edge of the hole. She grasped them and brought her left foot level with the right. Her body was balanced on her toes, her fists desperately clutching the grasses. There was a jutting stone higher to the left. She planted her foot and launched herself upwards, and there was an agonising moment when she had to give up her handhold and grope for another beyond it. She found a thorny stem, which tore her palm, but still she grabbed and hauled herself up by it. Both feet were level again, her face was mockingly tickled by the fronds of grass.

Her breath sobbed in her throat.

‘Help me,’ May whispered, but she had no expectation that help would come. There was no island woman, no Doone; neither Ivy nor her father would hear her entreaty. There was no membrane either, nothing but herself and the whistling emptiness of the brightening air.

‘Again,’ she commanded.

She tested her handholds by pulling on them. They seemed firm enough. Then she sprang up from the foothold. Her feet flailed and scraped as she tried for a purchase. It seemed that she was slipping downwards, but somehow she hoisted her hips over the edge of the hole.

Her feet swung in empty air and her face was smothered with soil and wet leaves. She dragged one knee over, then the other. She found herself crouched on all fours, panting like a dog.

Above her was the broken-down stone wall of what had once been the whalers’ refuge. Behind and higher up the slope was the oak tree. The chinks of sky visible through the canopy of leaves were a mild, smoky blue.

May began to crawl up towards the humped back of the island. Her hands were tom but she couldn’t find the strength to stand upright.

Marty had lost sight of Spencer and Alexander. He thought he must have crested the ridge and begun the descent before them. Either they were still on the landward side and were out of sight and earshot, or the agreed distance between them had widened and they were much further over to his right. He stopped walking and cocked his head to listen. There was the raucous screaming of the gulls and the rustle of the sea, and he made an effort to block them out. There was something or someone moving in the scrub below him; too far down the slope and in the wrong direction to be Spencer Newton.

Marty took a step forward, then another, and stopped to listen again. The crackle of leaves and twigs had stopped. ‘May?’ he called. ‘May, Ma-aa-ay …’

There was an answer, a thin cry: ‘Help me.’

He broke into a run, wildly crashing forward and slowing immediately because he made too much noise. She was still below him, not far away now, he could hear the repeated cry much more clearly. He ducked under the shade-spreading branches of an old tree and saw her. The tiny white oval of her face was turned imploringly upwards.

May knew that rescue and safety were approaching, then she saw who it was.

She understood everything that had happened in a sudden blinding instant and the knowledge made fear hit her all over again. It turned to a hammer-blow that made splinters of pain fire off in her chest so that she stopped crawling and crouched with her arms crossed to protect herself.

She was afraid of him. As soon as he was close enough he saw it and smelt it, a sharp, feral scent. Her fear ignited a flare of panic in him and at once his head was twisting, his eyes scanning the ranks of trees for witnesses. They were alone in the woods, no one else had heard her. She had been lost. She needn’t be found. His fists tightened, white-knuckled, a terrible reflex.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ The words wrung themselves out of her, burning in her parched throat. ‘It was you who came and took her diary. You were the only one who knew about it.’

He took a step towards her. His hands hung heavy now, the fingers thick and clumsy.

‘It was you she loved.’

‘I didn’t hurt her,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t do anything she didn’t want.’

May was very tired. Her eyes flickered and her head was heavy, much too heavy for her shoulders. The bars of her pain cage were closing in, tighter and tighter.
Everywhere, and there. Nothing she didn’t want
. It was the truth, perhaps. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she begged. ‘Please, Marty, don’t hurt me.’

He knelt down in a hurry, his shadow blocking out the light. She flinched a little and the sign of her fear made his thoughts burrow on into the darkness.
If May was not found, if she was silenced, no one would know
. A tide of blood hammered in his ears.

Spencer was whistling, a sharp extended note that shrilled through the trees. Relief surged through Marty. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, locking his arms around her so that she whimpered with the pain of it. ‘You’re found. You’re safe now. We’re going to take you home.’

He held May’s head against his chest, stroking her hair. He whistled in answer and shouted, ‘She’s here! I’ve found her!’

She closed her eyes. Later she remembered that he had picked the leaves and twigs tenderly out of her matted hair.

When Alexander had run for help and Spencer was giving her sips of water from a bottle he carried, Marty blindly turned away. He looked down into the deep hole, the old cellar of the whalers’ retreat. He was white to the lips. Lifting his hand to rub a prickle of sweat from his face, he saw that it shook like an old man’s.

Fourteen

The late sun shot an arrow of gilt across the sea. A four-wheel drive truck driven by a police officer in wraparound sun-glasses nosed on to the shingle and a knot of people immediately gathered round it. At the same time a fishing boat appeared in the channel between the headland and the rocks of Moon Island. The onlookers stood watching and in the quiet that fell the steady chug of the engine grew loud. A stretcher and blanket were unloaded from the truck and carried to the water’s edge.

Up among the blooms of phlox and kniphofia in Elizabeth’s garden Leonie and she stood together. Their elongated shadows pointed to the edge of the bluff like signposts. They could see Alexander down in the group on the beach, and the Beams, and Judith Stiegel with the baby in her arms. The black shingles of the Captain’s House next door were warmed by the light to mellow grey-brown, but the house stood empty and silent. John and Ivy had run out and down to the boat, which took them out to the island.

Hannah stood watching too, from the corner of her porch. Aaron was propped in his chair close to the open door. His head lolled and abruptly lifted again as the breath snagged in his chest. ‘What?’ he called out to Hannah.

‘Nothing yet. The boat’s just coming in.’

The boatman cut his engine and two or three men waded through the shallows to hold the prow of the craft. It rocked on the swell and the sound of voices giving orders came across the beach. Leonie felt Elizabeth’s hand on her arm, and took it and held it in hers. The stretcher was laid out on the shingle.

May was lifted out of the boat by one of the men in the water. He hoisted her seemingly without effort and carried her the few steps to the beach. He made to lower her to the stretcher, and Leonie and Elizabeth both remembered the other motionless body, dark and heavy with water, and the tarpaulin that had wrapped it out of sight.

But May would not be made to lie down. Instead, the man set her gently on her feet and supported her with his arms. Ivy and John closed in on either side of her. May took one step forward and turned her face up to the sky.

‘She’s walking up the beach.’

Leonie smiled. The difference from the other one was so plain. Alexander had brought them the news before hurrying back to the beach, but to see her for themselves was the best reassurance. They put their arms around each other, and there were tears and relief at the same time.

Elizabeth took a folded handkerchief from her sleeve. She dried her eyes and looked around her. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen the garden look more beautiful than it does at this minute?’

And it was true that there was a luminosity in the early evening, which delineated every leaf and petal in an intricate arrangement of melting light and shadow.

Hannah said to Aaron, ‘They’re putting her in the truck now, with her father and sister. They’ll be taking her to the hospital, I guess, but she looks well enough to me.’

‘I’m glad of it,’ he answered with composure.

Hannah lingered on the porch for a while longer, watching the groups of people on the beach break up and turn away in their separate directions. Spencer and Alexander peeled away from Marty and Judith, and the two couples traced a V-shape across the shingle to their steps. In the middle a clump of Beams jostled around Marian’s bulk, like tugs bringing a liner in to dock.

The slanting light was distinctly end-of-summer. Within a month the last visitors would be gone, and Pittsharbor and the deserted bluff would be ready for winter. Another year’s cold would be hard for Aaron to endure, but he wouldn’t agree to leave the place. He was held here by his memories, which were more vivid to him now than the pallid and painful constrictions of reality.

‘Fine evening,’ Hannah observed calmly as she came across and settled the pillows behind his head.

May was transferred from the truck that had brought her up from the beach to a waiting ambulance. Ivy and John and a police officer went with her. One of the paramedics gave her tiny sips of water as they rolled along the lane towards Pittsharbor. She begged for more in a cracked whisper, but he wouldn’t let her have it. Her lips were split by deep seams crusted with blood, and her tongue was dark and swollen. She wouldn’t let go of John and Ivy. John supported her in his arms and Ivy held on to her hand. John kept lowering his head so his mouth brushed against May’s hair.

Ivy wanted to smother her sister with love, to choke her and ram her throat full of it, so that if she ever vanished again she would at least take the certainty of it with her. And with another part of herself she wanted to vent her anger for the last hours, by hitting and hurting and clawing at her in a blaze of retaliation. She bit her own lip until it stung.

May opened her eyes. ‘It hurts. My hand.’

Ivy loosened her fingers. They were cramped with the intensity of her grip. Anger felt like a blowtorch burning in her chest. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so mad at you. I thought you were dead.’

The paramedic looked a warning at her. They were travelling faster now, gathering speed towards the hospital.

To her surprise May grinned, then winced at the pain from her split mouth. ‘I thought I was, too.’