CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
It can't wait until morning. I've already waited so long that my fears have now become realized. The letter is in my hand. Now that there's no salvaging anything, I won't wait an hour more to confront him. I'm aware the irony of this. The frogs in the wet furrow beside the path stop singing as I pass by.
The cottage is quiet. His pipe lies cold on the arm of the chair on the porch and his wet boots are drying on the step. A rosy light glows from the open window. I wrench open the door. The lock pops apart. Bits of old plaster flutter from the doorframe into my eyes. He's propped in his narrow bed, the blanket twisted around his legs, dim-lit by the candle on nightstand. He is wearing only a pair of ragged drawstring flannels. I realize that the shadow I saw in the hollow of his sternum the other night in the moonlight is in fact a dark-blue tattoo of a mermaid in profile. The book he's reading, a paperback I overlooked in my search, slides to his lap as he sits up. His eyes are wide. I reach him before he has time to even open his mouth.
"This," I tell him. I crush the letter into his chest. "This is why."
He takes the letter from my fist and smooths it out beside the candle, tilts his head back to read. His lashes drop. Under them I watch the green of his eyes moving over the page. Then he looks up and his eyes meet mine and catch. There is no consternation, no offer of remorse. Instead his brows raise slightly.
"A note?" he says. "That's all?"
My hearing goes hollow. I could tear him apart. He frowns, folds the letter, reaches up, gently tucks it into my pocket.
I grab his wrist in my fist and clench it. It's wiry, tough as a root, and in it I can feel his steady pulse. He's not afraid of me. He's never been afraid of me, not even when he was opening the cellar door, not even when I was out running through the fields all night and nothing stood between us but the lock I just broke.
I squeeze tighter. His pulse does not raise, but one edge of his upper lip does. It's almost a smile. And for a moment, there is no cottage, no letter, no candlelight, no garish paperback. There is only a bright light of understanding which floods the room and blanches out everything but the two of us. Of course he's not afraid. Of course this knowing smile is all he will respond with. I am a fool. There is no wife.
No family. It was the only option. The map. Summers in the northern sea. Like losin' your coat an you see some other fellow wearin' it. I don't know why it's taken me so long. I am blind. It's obvious, now. The fur, it's his. We are both of us monsters.
Everything falls into place as I stand there and breathe, even as it is unbelievable.
I must've let go of him without realizing it, because he's rubbing his wrist and grinning at me ruefully, eyes narrowed.
"Funny," he says. "Funny how you are. Hide away your whole life just so no one'll write you a dirty note."
"So that I can live," I reply. So that I don't get shot. So that Agnes doesn't find me two days later, spread out in the grass with the crows around me.
"How is this living? You hate it, I see how you hate it."
"We do things we hate to stay alive," I say. What I do not say is: And here you are washed ashore. How is my cellar any different from that box in the corner? Haven't we both locked up what we are?
He shakes his head. "When do you do the things you love, then? It's just a note. You're at the mercy of anyone who leaves you a note? When they don' even bother to sign it?"
His hypocrisy is unbearable. I lean over him. "You are telling me that you've come here because you love pulling weeds?"
It doesn't faze him. He's frowning at me. He kicks the blanket away from his legs, swings to the edge of the cot. "When I was a boy I took on a tramp out from Melbourne. The bosun kept a dog aboard he'd picked up out of the bush. Spotted thing. Wild. Ate scraps. Laid on a mat outside his cabin and bit anyone that came near it. And if the bosun walked up too fast the dog bit him too. Bosun would always say, 'Ah, this dog, he's priceless, he guards my room.' We all laughed about that. Who do you think that room belonged to, Henry?"
The metaphor is humiliating. I imagine slapping him. I wouldn't know how to make myself stop if I did. "And I remind you of the bosun."
He shrugs, a quick ironic lift of his shoulders, tilt of his head. "All right. If that's how you decide to take it."
"How else am I meant to?"
"You went past me. I saw you, Henry."
"What did you see?" It comes out with more of a snarl than I had intended. Some of the question is curiosity: I have always wondered what I look like. The rest... I want to see his fear.
I don't get either response I want. He smiles, eyes dark in the candlelight, his face a puzzle of shadows. "Depends on how I decide to take it."
"What does that mean?"
He pauses. "What I saw was the other part of you. Still you, though." He smiles again. This time it is an honest smile, no mockery. "And later, I heard you. You sang half the night."
The word sang has opened a crevice of memory, like a slice of a dream, and I remember, just vaguely, pressure in my chest, and the feeling of anticipation, the feeling of listening hard for some answering sound.
And I remember soreness in my throat, that next morning beside the creek.
"Sang," I mutter.
He nods. "And left dead rabbits on my doorstep. Scared the life out of me the next morning, before I realized was you who'd done it. I gave them to Rosie."
I swallow. Jugged hare. Rosalind's grandmother's recipe. I've lived my life in fear of what I would do, were I ever to get out. Nightmares of children disemboweled and strewn across the heath, cottages on fire, people running in terror, brutality, armageddon. How disconcerting it is to find that I spent my night singing and bringing gifts to my beloved. No wonder he's not afraid now.
That was what I'd killed, of course: his dinner. Rabbits. A natural thing to do, all considered, and harmless. And it was my harmless singing which has brought the letter to me. Across the silent valley someone in the village heard a wolf's howl, someone old enough to remember. Seamus could've guessed this would happen. Also true is that he has only scorn toward my efforts to protect myself; had he respected them, I might never be caught.
He pulls the blanket taut from the foot of the bed and I realize he's opening the space beside him so that I will sit. He's not liking me standing over him. I pull the stool away from the small table, upsetting the pair of boots beneath it, and sit on that instead.
"Game's over, anyhow," I tell him. "You've lost the trick before you could use it."
He blinks at me. "I didn't want to blackmail you. It wouldn't do you any good if I did. You haven't any sense of humor about it, you'd just pay me."
I can only stare at him. "There's no humor in it. You've put me in danger."
His eyes lose their sardonic shine and his expression goes suddenly grave.
"Henry. You're not meant to be doing this." He doesn't need to spell out what this is. The cellar. The hiding and hurting. Unlike anyone else, perhaps, he's comprehended what he was seeing. I spent my adolescence believing I would trade anything for the feeling of being understood. Now that someone does, it's an entirely new vista of shame.
"Perhaps not. But that isn't why you opened the door. You wanted us on equal terms."
He shrugs. "I did. I do. But there were other ways I could've gotten that. I wanted..." He pauses, and I am watching him decide how much of the truth he'd like to tell, "I wanted to lend you a hand, say."
I shake my head. "You wanted to put me in danger."
"You are in danger. It's just as much danger whether you hide or not." He clears his throat. "What happens to you if they don't shoot you, Henry? Do you live a long and happy life?"
I don't answer.
He looks at his hands, murmurs, "What did you say happened to the man before you, again?"
I don't answer.
He leans back on his palms, regards me down the crook of his broken nose. "You couldn't do it yourself. Or you wouldn't. I can, and will, and did. It was a favor."
"No," I say. "You are both wrong and a hypocrite. This is no favor. You were angry; you still are. When they come for me you'll just run away. As you've been doing all your life. Look me in the eyes, tell me that isn't true."
He bristles. "High time they do come for you. Don't worry what I'll do. I'm an old hand at this. What'll you do, Henry?"
Bargain, I think, instantly, and am instantly ashamed. "Fight," I answer.
He laughs.
"No. I'll fight. You'll lie down and let them tie the collar on."
The way I'm doing now. The way I'm wheedling this man instead of burying him out in the dark arbor, or tearing out his tongue and sending him off, or shooting myself in the heart, or any of the other things my ancestors have done, I am wheedling him, beseeching him for a security I've already lost. In a heartbeat I make my decision. I rise from the stool, face him, drop to my knees before the bed. I put my hands on his thighs, the way he did to me in the garden. It unsettles him as well. Under my hands he is warm. His lips part in sudden surprise.
"I'm going to tell you how it is, now," I say. Beneath my knees the floorboards are rough and uneven. Heavy in my nose and mouth is the warm-skin smell of his crumpled blankets. "And I want you to hear me."
Outside, the frogs have resumed their fervor but in here it is only a pale buzz. In the silence of the cottage I can hear his quiet breathing, the candle sputtering.
"All right," he says, softly. He bends his head down towards mine. He is only inches away.
"In the morning you're going to forget about that door. You are going to forget what you know of me. I am not asking. Do you know why?"
He shakes his head, a tiny movement. He's close enough that his breath pulses across my mouth.
"I know why you hid it in that chest," I whisper. "And I know what happens to you when you can't get it back." He startles. Even this close I can see his pupils dilate. "Could you bear to live like me? To do as I do? I know why you're so afraid it will be taken. I know what you are."
He makes a low, involuntary sound. I watch as his face smooths, and then I see the most extraordinary thing: I watch his eyes go dull. The animation that was in them dissolves. Now it is gone. We are two strangers in a room. He pulls his head back. The pulse of warm breath is gone from across my lips.
I push down a sudden and wrenching regret. He turns away. His blunt profile is motionless in the candlelight. "You couldn't know what I am," he says, finally, "when you don't even know what you are, yourself."
It comes out of me in a shuddering rush. "I know enough. I know what that fur means to you, and I can imagine what it feels like to have it lost to you forever. You want equal terms? You're not strong enough for equal terms. I have been doing this all my life. I have never been free. I will never be free. You can do nothing to me, not anymore." I take a breath. "What happened to the man before you?"
I stand up. He doesn't look at me.
"Henry, you are a fool," he says softly, barely audible, and leans to pick up his book from the floor. His hand is shaking. I pull the cottage door closed, hard. Behind me the broken lock falls to the ground.
It's especially silent, now that the frogs have stopped their song, now that the clouds have covered the waning moon. Back in the house I stop at the sideboard and pour myself a drink and listen to that loudest of loud sounds tear through the room, the ticking of the clock.