The Surface Breaks

  The line for the yacht turns around a corner, the sea coming into view. The sky reaching away from us to stitch stars into its surface. I see Oliver. That woman, Flora, standing beside him. She whispers in his ear, looking back at me as if she knew I would be there.

  Who are you? She puts a finger to her lips, as if telling me to be quiet and I trip over the end of my dress. George’s hand on my arm steadies me and I wish I could ask him to carry me, to take the weight off these ruined legs. I wish George had been the man I had rescued, that it had been him that I had traded my voice for. I might not love George, but I could live with him and be happy.

  “Are you drunk? Is our innocent little Gracie drunk?”

  “Give it a rest, Rupert,” George says, but he takes his hand away from me quickly. “And you just cut the queue, by the way.”

  “Don’t be so wet,” Rupert rolls his eyes. He has a half-empty bottle of champagne in one hand, the other around the waist of a barely conscious girl. Her hair is covering her face, her skirt so short that I can see her black lace underwear. He turns to the people behind us. “Do you mind that I’ve joined my good mate George here, or would you rather be fucking bastards and insist I go to the back?” The two girls nervously murmur, it’s fine, don’t worry about it, Rupert. Not a problem.

  “See?” Rupert says to George. He swigs from the bottle, the girl slipping from his grip like a rag doll. She doesn’t move as she hits the ground, her legs akimbo, showing her secrets to the world. No one goes to help her.

  “What a slut,” I hear someone say. “And what is she wearing?”

  “Oops,” Rupert laughs as he looks down at her. “Someone has had too much to drink, haven’t you, darling?” He drags the girl up, her head lolling on her shoulders. “Cordelia here and I are going to have a very fun night.”

  “That girl is comatose,” George says. “You can’t possibly—”

  “You’re not my fucking mother, George.” Rupert walks away from us, carrying the girl over his shoulder, as if she was a prize he had collected. I remember Ling, her dark eyes, her new-found silence. How she now walks as if she has lead in her bones. Something stolen from her that can never be given back.

  “Shit,” George says under his breath. “Grace, I have to go after him. I can’t let him – not again.” He winces an apology at me. “Do you think you can walk the rest of the way by yourself?”

  I wave him off, I’ll be fine. He hurries after Rupert, yanking him back by the shoulder, Cordelia falling to the ground again. George kneels to help her, but Rupert grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, lugging him to standing and screaming in his face.

  “Hello?” Fingers prodding into my back. “Hurry up, will you?” Inhaling through my nose when I take the first step without George’s help, the pain bitter-sharp.

  “Sorry, miss,” a man in a peaked cap says when I finally reach the marina. “No shoes allowed on deck.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” he says when I look around, as if expecting Daisy or Oliver to come to my rescue and explain. “No. Shoes. On. Deck.” He points to a container at the side of the ladder. “Put them in the wicker basket and you can collect them after the party, like everyone else.”

  I cannot take my shoes off, dancing blood across this boat like a seeping shadow, this boat which shares a name with my mother. Muireann.

  “Come on,” someone shouts. “What’s the hold up? Get on the boat or go home, for fuck’s sake.”

  I step out of the way. The guests boarding the yacht are all young, in their late teens and early twenties, I would wager, and their excitement is palpable. It is as if an infectious fervour is soaring within them at the thought of the night ahead, at the promise it holds. This could be the night that everything changes, you can imagine them thinking. Lovers, hand in hand, trailing kisses and sonnets from mouth to mouths. Young men, eyes hungering: What about that one? No, look at the one next to her, the dark-haired one. They estimate the beauty of each passing girl, weighing it up with their friends. Listing pros and cons as if it is their decision to make, that the girls’ beauty will be determined by their opinions rather than objective fact, because they are men and a man’s word is final. The girls, knowing the men are watching them but pretending to be unaware, performing a calculated innocence they have been told they must possess.

  “Hey, you.” The man guarding the ship asks me some time later, when I am the only one remaining on the marina. “Are you coming? Crunch time, little lady. I’ll have to set sail without you otherwise.”

  I could go back to the Carlisle estate, limp upstairs and call for Daisy, beg her to give me more of her potion while she bathes my feet. I would try and thank her for everything she has done for me and wave goodnight smiling, as she leaves me to die in peace. What would she find of me when she came to wake me in the morning? Bones and tides of blood smeared on the sheets? Or would I simply vanish, leaving no trace?

  “Miss?” the man says. “I haven’t got all day here.”

  I must do this. I cannot lose courage before the final test. My mother would have wanted me to be brave. I reach down, shedding my shoes, a soundless scream congealing in my throat when the leather hooks into my feet, stripping flesh with them. It is as if my bones know that these feet are not real, and they are eager to fall away from me.

  “Jesus,” he says, stifling a gasp. “What have you done to yourself? Do you need me to call a doctor?” No. No doctors. They cannot help me. “I can’t let you on board like that, miss,” he says. “You need medical attention.” I grab his hands in mine. Please. I need to get on this boat named after my mother. Maybe there will be clues about what happened to her, about her relationship with Oliver’s father. I need to know, I cannot die without knowing. I point at his socks then at my feet. “You want my socks?” he asks, confused, and I nod. “But your feet. Miss, that’s not normal.” I am tired of people saying I am not normal. “You should—”

  I sit on the floating walkway, dipping my legs into the water, the blood sizzling-fresh on the waves. I take one clean foot out, then the other, displaying them to him. With an uneasy glance over his shoulder, he peels off his socks.

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” he says as he gives them to me.

  Maybe he too is used to doing as he is told.

  The man tells me to call him “Captain”, although he bears little resemblance to the man at Eleanor’s dinner party, the one who believes in mermaids. This new Captain brings me to what he calls the “foredeck hatch”, dragging an armchair into a corner where I can curl up, feet hidden beneath my dress. The Muireann is much larger than the boat upon which I saw Oliver for the first time. I imagine my mother here. Did she dance on this gleaming deck, smile at the staff in white uniforms, circulating with trays of champagne?

  The atmosphere is hectic; and overwhelming – do these humans never get tired of so much noise? I can hear the sound of broken glass, and young women are pulling dresses off over their heads so they can dive into the sea, their nubile bodies cutting through it like blades. Heads bobbing in the dark, and they look like Salkas as they wrestle their way up rope ladders, hair pushed back off their faces, dripping salt water. It’s so refreshing, they say, warm as a bath, while their teeth chatter. Girls in their soaking underwear, swaying but not falling. This would not happen in the Sea Kingdom. My father would not tolerate it, especially not for the pure women born of his flesh.

  No one is interested in me, tucked away in this corner, so I am free to study them closely. Drinking, dancing. Kissing. Couples going downstairs, the girls pretending to be reluctant. “I don’t usually do this,” they say, the boys urging them to: “Come on, baby.” When they reappear, the girls are flushed, the boys buttoning up shirts with an exaggerated emphasis, looking around to see who has noticed them.

  And Oliver. I have been unable to take my eyes off him, and yet I doubt he has even noticed that I am on board.

  He is sitting at the back of the deck, Flora opposite him. He is bending fo
rward, his knees touching hers but she leans away, as if there is no need to make any effort with him. Oliver looks happy, I realize. He looks the happiest I have seen him since the water claimed Viola for its own. Maybe this was what he needed, all along. Someone to talk with, rather than at. The one thing that I could not give him, indeed the one thing I gave up so that he would find me attractive. Flora stands, holding five fingers up; Oliver’s gaze following her until she disappears out of sight. He looks dazed, as if he had forgotten the rest of the world had existed until now. Then he sees me and my stomach drops, tightening with that sensation that I cannot name, the sensation that only Oliver gives me, still, still. My body is a traitor.

  “Grace,” he says, walking over to me. “I didn’t notice you there. Are you having a nice time?” He takes a glass from a passing waiter, but doesn’t thank him. He rarely thanks the staff, I’ve observed. All the little things that I have ignored about this man, in order to make the narrative of true love and destiny fit. I tried to make him as perfect as I needed him to be.

  “What a night this has been,” he says. “I can hardly believe it. And the band were the highlight, weren’t they? I only hired the Furies because one of the servants said that he had seen them at a fête last year. I could have so easily hired another band. And then I wouldn’t have met Flora. You know who Flora is, don’t you?” he asks me. “The girl with that extraordinary voice.” My voice. Is Oliver really trying to tell me that he’s fallen in love with a girl who has my voice? “Tall girl, short hair.” Looks like Viola, I want to add. You do remember Viola, don’t you, Oliver? “She’s wonderful, Grace. She’s so smart and interesting and she’s funny. You rarely meet girls who are funny, do you?”

  Maybe because girls have been trained to laugh at boys’ jokes rather than make any of their own.

  Flora is interesting and smart and funny, whereas all I have to offer is my face and my body. And if he does not want that, then what use am I? I am a shiny ornament to be displayed and admired, but not to be touched. All I have ever wanted was to be touched by someone who loved me.

  “And you know what, Grace?” Oliver continues. “I have you to thank for this.”

  Me?

  “It’s true.” He laughs at my astonished expression. “You’ve only been here such a short time, but I feel…” He runs a hand across his jaw while he searches for the correct word. “Settled now that you are here. Does that make sense? It was as if you were left on that beach for me to find, like the heavens sent you to help me recover. You have given me back my confidence. I know that you only ever want what’s best for me.”

  I clear my throat. In that moment, I do not want what is best for Oliver. I want to slit his throat with a rusty blade, watch him fall to the deck and bleed out before me.

  “Hello.” Flora has returned. Up close, she is even prettier than I had thought. Perfect white teeth in a full-lipped smile, clear skin. “Apologies for taking so long, the queue for the loo was horrifying.” Her speaking voice doesn’t sound like mine, though; it is lower. More husky. Sexy, Rupert would say, if he was here. She holds out a hand to shake mine. “I’m Flora,” she says.

  “Don’t expect much in the way of conversation from Grace,” Oliver says, elbowing me as if I am one of the boys. “She’s more of the silent type.”

  “Grace?” Flora raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s your name now, is it?”

  “That’s what we call her,” Oliver says, adding sotto voce, “she’s a mute, poor thing. My mother and I have taken her in at the estate.” My hands curl into fists at my sides. As if I am a stray dog that they have rescued. An animal that can be easily cast aside again, when they grow bored of me.

  “Well,” Flora says, grazing her hand across my shoulder, an indistinct murmur of an electric current running between us. “It’s very nice to see you, Grace.”

  “So,” Oliver says, angling his body towards Flora, edging me out of the conversation. That’s rude, Oliver. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? “You were saying before that—”

  “That the uprising in the islands was essential? Yes, it clearly was.”

  “I disagree,” Oliver says, as if that should be enough to shut down any counter arguments. I can imagine his parents reassuring Oliver that his opinions mattered when he was a child, sitting around the dinner table and asking their young son for his thoughts on the meal or his day at school. His voice would have been valued. I wonder if I would have been so quick to relinquish my own if I had experienced the same. “I don’t think rioting is acceptable under any circumstances,” he says. “Those people were just using the protest as an excuse to smash windows and loot whatever they could get their hands on.”

  “Those people? Are you serious?” Flora screws her face up at Oliver. “Those people owned the land long before you came, and those people have been treated abominally ever since. Do you expect them to wait politely while they’re being shot down in the streets? I’m shocked they’re not tearing the islands apart in fury; god knows they would have the right to.”

  I draw a breath in anticipation of how Oliver will respond to being challenged in such a public fashion, and by a woman at that. But he is quiet, his forehead creasing in concentration as Flora talks. “Yes,” he says when she pauses. “I suppose you’re right, Flora,” and then: “That’s a very good point, Flora, I never really thought about it that way.”

  The conversation moves from politics to music to literature to sports, Flora displaying an in-depth knowledge of each subject, as if she has spent years studying in preparation for this conversation. It’s almost mystifying, her expertise. “You’re so clever, Flora,” Oliver says, eyes shining, and I want to scream. What is it men actually want from us? “How do you know all of this?” he asks. She cracks jokes that I do not understand, but which make Oliver throw his head back in laughter. People drift towards us, the group becoming larger and larger, but Flora remains the centre of attention. No one can take their eyes off her. She’s so funny, I hear people whispering. And smart. They stand in a circle around her, enthralled. And yet her eyes remain on me, as if this entire performance is for my benefit.

  Who is this woman?

  The evening plummets into night, the moon rowing across the ocean’s skin. Voices spiking, people throwing words at each other but no one waiting for the replies. They are not having a conversation, these humans; they are merely delivering speeches, competing to see who can speak the loudest. The boat returns to the marina so a few guests can leave. Women with shoes in hands, make-up smeared down their faces as they stagger back towards the estate; some boys leaning over the side of the boat, vomiting. Two women wait to disembark, both petite and pretty, and they keep stealing kisses from one another. I can’t help but stare at them, open-mouthed.

  “What are you looking at?” one of them asks me.

  Nothing. I turn away hurriedly, and I think of Nia. Is this all that she has wanted? The freedom to hold another girl’s hand? Why had my father deemed such a simple act to be so terrible?

  “Come on, Captain, just another hour.”

  “No,” says the man whose socks I am still wearing, ignoring their protestations. “Time to go.”

  And go they do, one by one, until at last, it is only Flora, Oliver, and me remaining.

  “Goodnight, Captain,” Oliver says as that man goes downstairs, the crew following him. The captain tips his hat at Oliver as he passes. “Good evening, sir,” he says. “Or good morning, I should say. The sun is nearly up.”

  The sun is nearly up, I repeat to myself, feeling oddly resigned. The sun is nearly up and it brings my death with it. I will never see my sixteenth birthday.

  Why must you always be so passive, Muirgen? Cosima’s voice whispers in my head. If Cosima was here, she would march over there; run her fingers through Oliver’s hair and plant kisses on his mouth. Cosima would not be in the shadows, waiting for night to claim her for its own. But I am tired, so very tired. I don’t want to have to fight any more. My s
isters might want me to rage against the sky tilting with light, beckoning a new day forward with fingers of streaking pink, but I don’t have the energy. I feel weaker as the air gets brighter, wrapping itself around me, bending me transparent. I already feel as if I am dissolving.

  Oliver leans closer to Flora. A question is asked. She nods. And a decision made. Her hand reaches out to his, leading him downstairs to where the bedrooms are. Just before she disappears around the corner, she turns. Come, she mouths at me, crooking her finger to beckon me forward. There is a glint in her eyes, something between mischief and malevolence, and I am shaken out of my lethargy, I stand up to follow – but I fall to the floor instantly, my feet buckling beneath me. And they are gone.

  “What do we have here?” A harsh voice, slurring at the edges. “Gracie. All alone. That’s not like you. Where has your master disappeared to? Doesn’t he know that it isn’t safe to leave his pets unattended?”

  Rupert smells of anger and alcohol, his mouth streaked with the remnants of another woman’s lipstick. If it was George, I would smile, hand him a handkerchief to clean his face. But I do not dare do so with Rupert. I have seen with my own father how dangerous certain men can become when they think you are laughing at them. They always want to punish you for it. “Grace? Are you listening to me?” he says, and I shrink away, pressing my body into the couch.

  “What?” he says. “I’m not who you were hoping for? That happens a lot with me, I’m afraid. Everyone wants the dashing heir to the Carlisle fortune. My deepest apologies for disappointing you.” He bends low, as if curtseying to me. “Or were you looking for George? No luck there either, George took Cordelia home. So chivalrous, is our friend George.” He breaks off into a high-pitched voice and says, “I won’t allow you to take advantage of another girl, Rupert, it’s not right.” Rupert laughs. “He did leave me in rather a bind. No other woman at this party was in as, ah, acquiescent a mood.” He leans against the bow, watching me. (Tell us the nymph-tale of the Big Bad Shark, Grandmother, that’s my favourite, and the mermaid with the red ribbons in her hair. The shark and his sharp teeth. “All the better to eat you with, my maid.”)