Bothersome Number of Corpses

Prologue

It was three o’clock in the morning and the moon was a sliver of ice in an ink-blue sky; not a stroke of light in the west to show that the sun had ever set there, nor a hint of dawn in the east where a bank of clouds was gathering, so the darkness was as perfect as midwinter.

The sea had come in silently, waves unrolling like bolts of silk across the sands, and now it was still and full, waiting for the turn, lapping only a little as it slid gently up and down against the base of the cliffs. And so when she reached the break in the rock, a natural cove where men had built a harbour, there was no current to wash her into the welcome of its broad stone arms.

She had always loved the water; a quick swimmer, strong and sure in the warm salty tides, quick and supple like a fish escaping a net. So when she had entered the sea for the last time in her life – when, hours ago now, she had plummeted off the crumbling edge of the headland and come up choking – she had simply flicked her hair out of her eyes, kicked off her shoes and trodden water, looking around, sweeping her arms wide, letting the shock pass through her and her breaths grow calm again. When she was steady, she shrugged out of her jacket and let it float away. She tried for a moment to open her buttons, hoping to get her corset untied and let her lungs fill to the top before she started swimming, but the water was cold and, as she fumbled, twice she felt her chin sink under the surface and had to paddle her arms again.

That was the first fearful moment – as late as that. That was the first time she thought to use her lungs to cry for help and not to power her strong swim back to the shore. Two sheep at the edge of a field raised their bony heads and stared down at her, still chewing, then turned away. She scanned the line where the rock-face met the green pasture and could see nothing, not a house, not a track, not even a gate in the fence to show that the shepherd might pass by, going home at the end of his day.

Then she raised her legs in front of her and let her head drop back, feeling the coldness fill her ears. Perhaps she would find, if she let herself, that she would float to the shore, to the narrow band of boulders at the bottom of the drop, the boulders she might have fallen onto were not God Himself trying so hard to save her that He put His hand under her tumbling body and laid her gently down into His safe blue sea.

But she was floating away. Those sheep were smaller now. So she drove her legs downwards and lifted them behind her, feeling the second flutter of panic at the weight of her skirts and petticoats against the backs of her calves. Then she breathed in hard, the bones of her corset creaking against her ribs, picked a dark patch of gorse on the face of the cliff to fix her gaze upon and set off with a long, sculling stroke which seemed to push five yards of cold water behind her.

A hundred strokes later, when she took a rest, she knew the patch of gorse was no closer, but could not bear to believe it was further away.

A thousand strokes later, when she had stopped looking for the gorse, had stopped looking at the shore at all, terrified to see how distant it had become, she rested again and then turned outwards, thinking about the fishing boats, the way they fanned out of the harbour mouth each morning, blossoming over the sea, and the way they gathered homewards each evening, from every corner of the horizon, as if the boats themselves were drawing the night in after them. One of them would pass her, close enough to hear her cries.

She practised calling, and that was the third pulse of fear. Her voice was ragged, the croak of a crow; it barely reached her own ears even in the stillness this evening. She told herself that if she trod water she would not need to breathe so hard. If she breathed through her nose and kept her mouth closed her throat would soften again and her voice would be clear and loud when she used it, when the fishing boat came.

But waiting was lonely and she was cold, and so later when her mother called out to her and told her to come home, to eat her broth and bread, to take off her wet clothes, get into her warm bed and sleep, she wanted to call back that she was coming, that she would be there soon, but she kept treading water and looking for boats and she saved her voice for the fishermen.

And when her mother scolded her and told her not to shout out to strange men like a gypsy girl, told her to come home this instant, that the broth was hot and the bread was fresh, and there was an extra blanket on her bed and she could sleep until noon, could sleep the clock round, could sleep for ever if she would only come home, at last she answered – just a whisper – that she was coming. She turned her shoulder into the black cradle of the sea and rested and she felt no pain as the water covered her.