The following is an excerpt from ‘The Mute Swan’, the opening story of The Dog Husband by Rose McDonagh, now available to preorder from our online bookshop.
‘The Mute Swan’ by Rose McDonagh
‘Like a clown?’
‘Come on. Mute, not a mime.’
‘As in deaf-mute?’
‘No, just not speaking. She can hear. You’re acting like it’s funny.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I just want to understand. So it’s a physical thing? She can’t physically speak?’
‘No. He didn’t say that. I’m pretty sure it’s psychological. Listen, he thought you’d make a joke out of it. That’s why he asked me to tell you first.’
‘Me? You’re worse than I am.’
‘We’re both pretty bad. Let’s catch up and get all the jokes out the way, and then we can meet her without saying anything too awful.’
Our friend Christopher had a new girlfriend. We had rarely liked anyone he chose to date. When Tess told me about this one, I was hopeful. The speech problem made me think she might be less judgemental than the others. Tess and I met at the café on the corner nearest our two flats, sliding into our regular booth by the window. Tess had dyed her hair with streaks of cobalt since I’d seen her the week before. We did make a few jokes about this new person, but we only really wanted her to be kind. We ordered waffles and coffee. Beside us, the giant windowpane was hazed with condensation so that the people outside seemed to battle through fog. We talked until the staff began to mop the chequered floor.
The girlfriend’s name was Ella. I met her two weeks later when there was a last-minute plan to spend a weekend in a cottage up near Inverness. It was early March, and someone from the bar where Christopher worked had been unexpectedly unable to use the place.
On a drizzling Friday evening, I squashed into the back of Christopher’s car, lumping my rucksack onto my knees. Ella was sitting up front. I could see a strip of her face in the passenger visor mirror. She had neat, dark eyes, a long nose, wide, natural eyebrows. Tess was already sitting in the other back seat, her suitcase wedged between us. The car had a faint smell that I couldn’t put my finger on, except it reminded me of something from childhood.
‘Nice to meet you, Ella,’ I said.
I glanced to see if she nodded, but she didn’t seem to respond at all. ‘Hope everyone brought waterproofs and booze,’ Christopher said.
The journey was long, and Ella was, of course, silent, but Christopher spoke to her, making comments on the scenery or things he’d remembered or forgotten to pack, and her head did occasionally bob in response.
When we stopped at a service station, Christopher got out, and Ella slid from her seat and followed him. She was wearing jeans and a heavy woollen jumper. She was short, and slightly chubby, different in appearance from his other girlfriends. Despite my intention to be tolerant, I found it eerie the way she trailed after him without a word, as if she was his shadow unstitched.
‘Well, what do you think of our mute swan?’ Tess turned to me, grinning.
‘I don’t know yet. She might be nice.’
‘She might be. She doesn’t exactly seem warm.’
‘It’s hard to come across as warm if you don’t talk. Does she smile? I can’t see from here.’
‘Yeah,’ Tess said. ‘She has smiled sometimes. When he put the heater on, and when we stopped.’
They returned to the car, Christopher carrying a bottle of coke, Ella clutching a packet of crisps and a large caramel bar. I have always liked a person with an unfussy appetite, so this endeared her to me a little. We drove on, Tess taking a turn at the wheel, Christopher sitting in the back with me.
The sky darkened, the trees by the roadside transformed into grasping figures. Bottles clinked in the boot as we followed a lolling single-track road. We arrived in complete darkness, pulling into a gravel drive. The cottage sat on the edge of a sea-loch with a few others dotted either side. I couldn’t make out much else of the surroundings. Inside, the place was sparsely furnished, the stone walls left bare and rough, a real fireplace in the living room. The building had been made by adding an extension to a much older core.
We discovered firelighters in a drawer in the kitchen, old newspapers and kindling left out in a basket. In time, we got a blaze going and fed in a few large, dry hunks of wood. We settled in front of the television to watch a German film Tess had brought. Christopher and Ella took their place on the couch, Tess and me sank into an armchair each. The film was confusing, it had a modern setting, but the plot seemed to mash together different fairy tales, and all of it in black and white despite being recently made. Soon, Ella fell asleep on Christopher’s shoulder. She looked small and vulnerable and I found myself feeling almost protective of her. Outside, the wind was up, searching round the corners of the cottage. I must have dozed too because I woke to Tess saying, ‘Bloody hell, it’s a good film. Yous are not even trying.’
‘Sorry, I’m knackered,’ I said.
Ella rubbed her eyes and looked round the room.
‘I think we’re calling it a night,’ Christopher said, squeezing her against his side.
He and Ella retired to a double room at the end of the corridor. Tess and I were to share a twin room opposite the shower. ‘We’re the kids in this family,’ Tess said as we dug our pyjamas out of our bags, pulled the tightly tucked sheets from under the mattresses. I couldn’t help wondering if we would overhear anything from Christopher and Ella’s room, if she would make any kind of sound in the night. A snore or squeak or gasp. All was quiet as I stretched my legs under the sheets. I was tired from the day at work. Sleep rapidly pulled me under so that I heard nothing.
When the morning came, and I padded through to the kitchen, Ella was sitting at the breakfast table in her T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, eating oat flakes from a bowl. She smiled. In the sunlight, she looked ordinary and kind. I sat opposite in peaceable silence, eating a fruit yogurt as we waited for the others to join us.
The four of us headed out for a walk. The landscape had the dowdy, respectable colours of a female pheasant. Spring hadn’t reached this far north yet.
When we came to a more remote part of the loch, Christopher turned to face the water. ‘I’m going swimming.’
‘No, you’re not,’ I said.
He pulled a rolled-up towel out from his rucksack, looking pleased with himself.
‘You’ll freeze to death,’ I said.
He peeled off his clothes; he was wearing his swimming trunks underneath. Ella stood watching him. Once he was waist high in the water, she took off her coat and pulled up her sweater, revealing a black sports swimming costume. She kicked out of her jeans and pulled a towel from her backpack, which she left on a rock with her clothing. She followed him out, speeding away from us like an otter.
‘Nutters,’ Tess said.
I dipped my fingers in the water. ‘Like ice.’
They were far out in moments, their heads becoming small, slick dots. We watched Christopher turn and wait for Ella to swim up to him. They bobbed within a foot of each other. I briefly wondered what words were being exchanged, before I remembered there would be none.
They took a long time out there, appearing to just tread water. ‘I wouldn’t in a million, billion years. Not if you paid me,’ Tess said.
It began to seem like they were stationary objects that had always been there, like I had imagined them swimming out in the first place. Tess and I started to jump up and down to keep warm. A sharp wind bit at us. Slowly, their heads moved back towards shore, two otters following each other.
When they were within a few metres, they rose out of the water, grinning, clutching their shoulders, dashing the short distance to their discarded clothes. The pebbles must have hurt their feet. I stepped forward and handed Ella her towel. Christopher grabbed his and wrapped it round himself. Tess and I took a wander along the shore while they changed back into their clothes.
It was uncomfortable for me to admit I didn’t like Christopher’s girlfriends. Bound up with my feminism was an undefined sense that I should be able to connect to most women. Each of his past partners had been pretty and clever, and they usually had plums in their mouths. I found them spiteful but questioned my judgement. Did I envy their beauty, their place in my friend’s life? Was I annoyed that they obviously weren’t embarrassed by the private educations they’d mostly had? Or perhaps I fell into a pattern with them, each of us being wary of the other, giving off unfriendly, nervous signals. When I went over their behaviour, though, I always came back to the conclusion that they just weren’t nice people. Each time there was a string of little acts or comments that I could only interpret as mean-spirited. I decided Christopher had a knack for finding unpleasant women in the way that some people have a talent for hooking up with cruel men.
To read the rest of the story, order The Dog Husband from our online bookshop.
