Virginia tugged at a tangle of hair, pulling so hard that some of the strands came out at the root. She couldn’t contemplate the bomb itself; that was so faraway and fantastical that her imagination didn’t know where to begin. All she could think about was the fact that Juliet had been here, at Salt Winds, in January and that while she was here she’d eaten scones, bent the corners of her novel, bullied her brother – acted, in short, like someone with both feet in this world, and not like someone marked out by death. She’d been alive – entirely, fearlessly, casually alive – and now she was dead. Again and again, Virginia put the two facts side by side and failed to reconcile them. It was like trying to look in opposite directions at the same time.
The brush was full of hairs and fluff because she hadn’t bothered to clean it in ages. She picked at it now, remembering the red beret and the care with which Juliet had checked it for dirt after Theodore retrieved it from the marsh. Virginia hoped she hadn’t been wearing it yesterday; that it hadn’t survived Tollbury Marsh only to be obliterated by a German bomb. She dropped the hairbrush and went on to the landing, opening other doors, pacing round other rooms – trying to lose the obscene image of Juliet’s beret in shreds, with its red wool charred and bloodied.
Even the attic didn’t feel out of bounds today, and she didn’t climb the stairs especially quietly. She’d been up there once before, in the very early days, so she was familiar with the old mattress on the floor, and the hulking shapes of trunks and bedsteads against the walls, and the big, round window in the gable end. Now it felt squalid and messy. The old mattress was scattered with bits of torn paper, blankets and candle stubs, and there were brown stains all over it, which she hadn’t noticed before. As she stared, she found herself thinking things about Mr Deering and Lorna; images she didn’t want, but couldn’t shake off. She stared a little longer, hoping her thoughts would exhaust themselves, but they just got more and more lurid, and started muddling themselves up with Juliet’s death. In the end she left rather suddenly and ran downstairs feeling sick and unclean.
She made her way to the spare room, where she knelt by the window and laid her arms on the sill. The sun had just set over Tollbury Point and the village was a grey mass against the dimming sky. Clem had switched the wireless on downstairs, and the Home Service was playing cello music, which made her feel calmer. She gazed at the stubby church spire and the silhouettes of chimneys and treetops, and found that it was hopeless trying to distinguish particular buildings because they’d all melded into one. It occurred to her that every single person in the village was thinking about Juliet Deering at this moment, and wishing they didn’t have to.
Virginia’s gaze wandered down from Tollbury Point to the white ribbon of road that ran alongside the marsh. She leaned forward with her nose to the glass. There was someone there, emerging from the gloom and heading towards her; a man with his arms swinging free and his head bent low. He was moving quickly, charging along like a wounded bull, weaving from one side of the road to the other, sometimes banging against the flint wall, sometimes tripping and staggering on pot-holes. He might have looked quite funny in a Charlie Chaplin film, but he didn’t look at all funny in real life. When he was halfway along the lane his hat fell off, but though he paused to watch it roll into the verge, he didn’t bother to stop and pick it up. That was when Virginia recognised him, and drew away from the window.
Virginia ran on tiptoe along the landing. Her first instinct was to warn Clem of Mr Deering’s approach, as if he really was some kind of monster on the rampage. She didn’t want to shout – apart from anything else, he might hear through the open windows – but there mightn’t be time to run downstairs and back before he began hammering on the door. It was only when she heard Lorna whispering across the hallway – ‘Clem? Where are you? I think I just saw Max in the lane!’ – and Clem saying, ‘Max? Oh Lord,’ that Virginia remembered he was not Clem’s acknowledged enemy, but a childhood friend in dire straits. She waited at the top of the stairs, in the shadows, where no-one would see her.
In fact, Mr Deering did not hammer on the front door. He must have gone round to the back of the house and come in through the kitchen, because that’s where their voices gathered. Virginia knelt on the wooden chest and leaned over the bannisters. She could hear a chair scraping across the stone flags, and Clem – as calm and soft as if he was talking to her – saying, ‘Sit down, Max; easy, old chap.’ Lorna suggested a cup of sweet tea, and Mr Deering retorted that he was in the market for something a bit harder than tea, which seemed a rather jaunty thing to say in the circumstances, except that his voice sounded strange and not jaunty at all. It was shrill and loud, like an unoiled machine.
The kitchen door opened and Lorna’s voice grew clearer. ‘I’ll have a look in the dining room,’ she was saying. ‘I’m sure we can find you a drop of scotch.’
‘Lorna …’ Clem’s voice followed her like a warning and she hesitated, but he didn’t elaborate so she carried on.
As Lorna entered the dining room, the sound of the wireless flooded the house. It was still a solo cello, singing long, low notes, enough to make anyone cry, and Virginia’s eyes prickled. She hated having to pity Mr Deering; she didn’t want to have soft feelings for him. If only he would laugh out loud like a villain and say, ‘Who cares about Juliet? Thank God it wasn’t me!’ She could carry on disliking him then, in good conscience.
Lorna returned with decanter and glasses on a tray. She shut the kitchen door behind her and Virginia stole away.
The stars were starting to poke through the sky, like silver pins through lilac silk, and Virginia could smell the sea. She pushed her bedroom window open, as wide as it would go. It struck her as odd that Mr Deering – an important man with dozens of friends and acquaintances – had chosen to walk all the way to Salt Winds in the first flush of his bereavement. Perhaps it had something to do with his boyhood, she speculated vaguely. Or perhaps he’d come on the off chance that Clem would be out and he’d find Lorna alone. But that was a mean thing to suppose.
She sat hugging her knees, willing Clem to come upstairs and talk to her. The voices in the kitchen must have grown louder, or perhaps everyone had moved to another room, because she began to hear them again, even though her door was shut. When Bracken barked a couple of times, Mr Deering raised his voice and said something about ‘that bleeding dog’. Virginia tightened her arms around her legs. A few minutes later he shouted, and a glass shattered, and she stood up very quickly.
All was quiet as Virginia glided downstairs, and she couldn’t tell which room they’d moved to.
She pressed her ear against the kitchen door. There were no voices, but she could hear Bracken pattering across the floor and someone rooting through a cupboard. The dining-room door stood ajar and light spilled like honey through the gap.
None of them was sitting at the dining table now, though they obviously had been, because she could see the whisky decanter, the silver tray and a muddle of wet circles where their glasses had stood. She pushed the door and went a little further in, and saw broken glass on the floor around the fireplace: thousands of tiny shards, which glittered like diamonds in the lamplight.
‘Mind those pretty feet.’
Mr Deering was in here, all alone, and it was too late to flee. She hadn’t spotted him in the high-backed armchair because he’d blended so well with the shadows – all of him except his hands, which were spotlit by the lamp. His signet ring winked as he raised an empty tumbler to his mouth, tilting it right back and probing with his tongue in search of a last drop.
‘Ugh.’ He glared into the bottom of the glass, a drop of moisture hanging off his lower lip. His whole face was wet and swollen, and Virginia hoped it was just the heat and alcohol making him sweat, because the thought of Mr Deering in tears made her squirm. She thought he was going to ask for the decanter, which was still a third full of whisky, but when he looked up he was frowning as if something perplexed him; as if he’d forgotten what exactly he
wanted. His bloodshot gaze landed on her body, and wandered over it in frank appraisal; making calculations; totting up a price. When he hovered over the area of her navel, she thought one of her pyjama buttons must have come undone and she moved her hand to cover the gap. His lips curled into a half-smile.
‘Come and sit on my knee,’ he mumbled, rubbing his thighs with his free hand, as if to smooth a seat for her. His words kept running into one another, and his head wobbled from side to side as if it had come loose from his neck and needed fixing with a screwdriver.
Virginia swallowed. The fingers of Mr Deering’s other hand kept tightening and untightening round the empty glass, as if he was trying to pump it for more spirits. If he gripped any harder, it would implode in his fist, and there’d be more broken glass on the floor. She crossed her hands over her stomach as if she had an ache, and tried to think of something ordinary to say. She ought, probably, to make some sympathetic remark about Juliet, but she didn’t dare.
She fixed her eyes on the green lampshade, slightly to the left of his head. ‘Don’t break it,’ she said in the end, her tone wavering between resolve and apology.
‘Oh?’ Mr Deering held the glass aloft, as if he was about to administer the final squeeze. ‘Why’s that? Is it one of Daddy’s heirlooms?’
‘I just meant you might cut yourself.’
‘Aaah,’ he cooed, swaying forwards in his chair. ‘But you’d be here, sugar, to kiss it better.’
He began drawing circles on his lap again. ‘Why don’t you do that?’ he whispered. ‘Why don’t you come and kiss me better? Come on, don’t be mean. I’ll make you comfy on my knee.’
When Virginia shook her head, Mr Deering lurched to his feet. She thought he was coming after her – perhaps he was – but the whisky decanter diverted his attention. He staggered against the table, catching at the back of a chair to stop himself from falling.
‘We should drink a toast,’ he mumbled, as he began to pour. ‘I propose a toast.’
His hand wavered back and forth over the glass, and the amber liquid pooled on the tabletop.
‘To lovely little girls,’ he said, lifting the half-filled glass to his mouth and draining it in one go. He wiped his moustache on his sleeve, belching softly, and Virginia ran away.
Footsteps in the hall made her think she was being followed. Animal-like, she turned and crouched on the top stair, but it was only Lorna, coming out of the kitchen with a steaming mug in one hand and a dustpan in the other.
‘Bracken?’ she cajoled, without noticing Virginia behind the bannisters. ‘Bracken! Come with me. Come on, good boy.’ The dog obeyed reluctantly, creeping from the kitchen and sniffing round her ankles for a treat. ‘That’s it,’ Lorna whispered, squaring her shoulders and pushing the dining-room door wide open.
‘Well! What a mess!’ Her voice was bright all of a sudden; bright and sharp as broken glass. ‘Not to worry. You sit down, Max, and drink this tea while it’s hot. I’ll tidy round a bit.’
Virginia heard one of the big dining chairs toppling and heavy shoes crunching through the crystal shards. A hollow knocking began to interfere with the music: he was doing something to Clem’s wireless. Bracken began one of his deep, sustained growls, as Mr Deering’s speech grew louder and more shapeless.
‘It’s nice, this German music,’ he slurred. ‘Isn’t it nice? Beethoven, or something. Brahms. One of those Jerry composers, anyway. Very civilised. Don’t you think it’s most awfully civilised, Lorna?’
A swift click, and the music stopped.
‘Lorna! Don’t switch it off, just like that! You heard me say I was enjoying it! Don’t I deserve a bit of pleasure this evening?’
After that he started saying ‘Lorna’ over and over again and his voice became muffled, as if he was talking with his mouth full of food. Virginia pictured him eating Lorna up, bit by bit; stuffing his cheeks with her flesh and hair.
‘Max, please, please.’ Lorna’s voice was a desperate hiss; the genteel hostess had cut and run. ‘Don’t. Please get off me. Please, just sit down.’
Virginia wondered where Clem had got to, and wished to goodness he would come.
When she got back to her room she sat down on the floor with her back against the bed. Something was bumping and jangling across the garden, like an unwieldy bicycle, and she could hear the rumble of a man’s voice below her open window.
‘Oh goodness, the shears!’ Clem’s words floated upwards with the smoke from his pipe, and Virginia raised her head. ‘I’d quite forgotten. Thanks, Rosenthal, you must let me know what I owe you.’ But before the knife man could reply there was a bang, as of a door bursting open, and Mr Deering’s voice was flooding the twilit garden. Virginia hugged her knees tight as the French windows shivered in his wake.
‘What’s this then?’ he slurred. ‘What’s going on here?’
He must have given Mr Rosenthal’s trike an almighty kick, because there was a ringing, grinding crash and the wheels ticked wildly, round and round, like the hands of a crazy clock. Then there were grunts and screams and thuds and shouts (‘Max! Max!’) and a pattering noise, like bits of stone spraying off the wall, and a voice that kept calling on God (only he made it sound like Gott) – and however hard she screwed her eyes shut, all the noises seemed to twist together inside Virginia’s head, surging and swelling there until, at last, they burst.
The sudden quiet was worse. She had time to picture Clem bleeding his life out on the grass, and to wonder what on earth she was supposed to do, when Mr Deering broke the silence.
‘Quite the enemy sympathiser aren’t we, Clement?’ he gasped, breathing hard. ‘With your Jerry music and your fucking Jerry friend?’
‘Max, old man.’ Clem spoke gently, as if cajoling a small child. ‘Let him alone, now. Come on. Let him alone.’
Mr Deering’s obscenities rose above all the other noises, flowing like hot breath into Virginia’s ear – bloody Hun, filthy Yid, bastard, fucking bastard – on and on and on in a rhythmic chant. Lorna’s pleas glided in and out of the din, until finally there was something like a pause, and the clatter of the tricycle being righted, and a series of gasping whispers that Virginia couldn’t make out.
Virginia counted to twenty before unwinding her arms from her knees and crawling, cautiously, to the window. Mr Rosenthal and Lorna had gone, but Mr Deering was pounding his fists against the earth as if there was still someone there to punish. It can’t have been very satisfying because his flow of swear words began to dwindle, and eventually they stopped altogether and he just huddled there on his hands and knees with his head hanging low. His shoulders began to convulse and at first Virginia thought he was crying, but then she realised he was being sick into the grass.
When he’d finished, he crawled to a clean patch of earth and lay down with his head on his arms. Clem sat near by, like a watchman, with his back against the knobbly flint stones and his pipe – extinguished during the fracas – dangling from the corner of his mouth. He looked shattered, and there were dark stains on his sleeves and all down the front of his shirt.
‘Is Mr Rosenthal all right?’
Virginia thought she’d find him in the kitchen – she’d pictured him lying on the table, half dead in a pool of blood, and entered warily, ready to fling her hands over her eyes – but there was only Lorna, sitting with her sewing basket and a pile of mending. She’d just picked Virginia’s grey pinafore dress off the top of the pile: the hem needed a stitch before school began on Monday morning.
‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ Lorna snapped, but before Virginia could reply she was shaking her head and answering, more patiently, ‘I don’t know. I think he is. He wouldn’t stay.’
‘Where did he go?’
Lorna tried to thread a needle with a length of black cotton, but her fingers were unsteady. When she caught Virginia watching she gave up and lowered the grey pinafore on to her lap.
‘I don’t know, he just went. His face was bleeding badly and I don’t know … I thin
k it was mostly his lip, but I’m not really sure. He wouldn’t let me see. He kept saying, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s all right,” but he sounded so upset. Oh Christ.’
Lorna dropped the sewing and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Virginia sat down carefully and traced her fingers over a whorl in the wood while she wondered what to say. The old tabletop rolled between them like a parchment map, grainy with longitude lines and knotty islands and uncharted territories. Sometimes she hated Lorna – and blamed herself for not hating hard enough – but sometimes she felt a funny kind of concern for her, a protectiveness, as if she herself were the real grown-up and Lorna was a little girl in disguise.
‘It’s not your fault,’ she ventured, at last.
‘Clem will say it is. Max was drunk when he arrived, and what did I do but bring out the whisky? I didn’t … I wasn’t thinking …’
Lorna ran her palms over her face, as if rinsing it with water. She must have touched Mr Rosenthal’s wound without realising it, because a little gobbet of blood came off her cuff and hung in her hair like a jewel.
Virginia stared at the bead of blood. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Poor Mr Rosenthal,’ sighed Lorna, sinking against the back of the chair. ‘Poor him. Poor Juliet. Poor Max. Poor everyone. What a mess.’
At some point during the night Clem summoned a taxi and took Max Deering home to Thorney Grange, and weeks went by after that without any contact. Of course, they glimpsed him and his son at Juliet’s memorial service, but the church was so full that they easily avoided having to speak or shake hands.
In the middle of October, a bouquet arrived at Salt Winds addressed simply To Mrs Wrathmell, with warm wishes, M. D. It was an extravagant confection of roses, carnations, zinnias and delicate greenery.
‘Very seasonal,’ muttered Clem, but Lorna was resolutely touched. She arranged the flowers in a vase and put them in the dining room, by the cabinet with the Meissen cups. It was Max’s way of apologising, she said, and it drew a line under the whole affair.
Call of the Curlew Page 7