Around the same time they heard that Mr Rosenthal had been arrested as an enemy alien, and that he was going to be interned on the Isle of Man. It was a shame in a way, said Mrs Hill, because he was a pleasant sort of chap and a bit of a local character. Still, a German is a German, and you can’t argue with that.
New Year’s Eve, 2015
VIRGINIA FINDS CLEM’S obituary in the top drawer of his desk; the one from the local newspaper, which she defaced as a child. Strange that it’s been lying here all these years; stranger still to think of Lorna cutting it out and keeping it, ink-stained gash and all.
They used a nice photograph, she’ll give them that. In fact, it’s the same as the one on the dust jacket of his last bird book, where he’s standing by the flint wall in jacket and tie, his hair tufting up in the wind. Underneath the photograph they’d printed Clement Gordon John Wrathmell, 5th April 1895 to ?31st December 1940? but eleven-year-old Vi had taken it upon herself to erase the second date, giving the two question marks on either side a chance to speak for themselves. She remembers doing it, scribbling so hard over the offending words that she ripped a hole in the paper and broke the nib of her fountain pen.
Virginia puts the obituary in her dressing-gown pocket, alongside the wedding photo, and shuts the desk drawer. There are five more drawers full of tobacco-scented relics and she’s got half a mind to carry on exploring. Half a mind. Yes, exactly. That’s what’s annoying her. The other half of her mind is obsessing about Sophie. It’s impossible to concentrate with another person in the house, even when that person is asleep. Twenty minutes ago she heard a squeaking noise and clumped all the way downstairs to find out what it was, only to glimpse Silver streaking along the skirting board with a mouse dangling from his jaws.
Virginia taps her stick impatiently, wondering what to do. The whole point of coming upstairs was to pull away from the girl; from the new magnetic centre of the house. The more distance there was between them, she’d calculated, the less distraction there’d be. It sounds silly now.
Virginia stumps to the top of the stairs and peers down at the closed kitchen door. There’s not a sound, except for the wind, and Silver has disappeared with his catch. Why can’t she just imagine she’s alone? She, who’s been living off imagination and little else for eighty-six years? She’s surely capable of pretending that the house is empty?
It’s because this day is different; that’s the problem. That’s what it all boils down to. Ever since last night, when she found the curlew’s skull on the doorstep, she’s known that this day, more than any other day of her entire life, possesses meaning and weight. Accidental things will not – cannot – happen to Virginia Wrathmell on New Year’s Eve, 2015. If a half-familiar girl rolls up in the Salt Winds kitchen on this day of all days, it’s because she’s been sent by Fate, or the Dead, or the Past or whatever it is that stared back at her, last night, from the bird’s hollowed eyes.
Who are you, Sophie? What have you come here for? Spit it out, girl; there’s not much time. Virginia curls her claws around the bannister and thinks about going downstairs – again – and shaking the child awake and shouting at her. But she’s lived long enough, and read enough stories, to know that Fate (and the Dead, and the Past) won’t give straight answers to straight questions. She’ll have to be patient. Besides, she can’t face staggering down those blasted stairs for the second time in half an hour.
There’s a wooden chest on the landing where spare blankets and pillows have always been stored. Virginia sits down on the lid to rest her hurting bones and enjoy a proper cough. Her chest is bad this winter, worse than in previous years; every time she wakes up, it’s as though her lungs have shrunk overnight, and there’s a little less room for breathing. It’s a shame the whisky bottle is downstairs, because she could do with another draught of that liquid smoke. She could do with a bite to eat as well: her head feels light and her legs are like dry sticks.
The church clock hasn’t struck for a while, or at any rate she hasn’t heard it, and she wonders what time it is. The morning’s getting on, and there’s still so much to do. All those boxes and drawers to look through; all those notebooks and letters and photos; all those beloved rooms. There won’t be time for them all. Not now.
Virginia strokes her palm over the lid of the chest. It’s a dark, tomb-sized, Victorian monstrosity, and it fits nicely at this end of the landing, against the bannisters. This is its proper place. This is where it stood before Clem was born, and this is where it stood throughout his life. Virginia remembers him on his last day, sitting on the lid while he talked to her and laced his walking boots.
It was Lorna who moved the chest, of course, in the spring of ’42. She shifted it in front of the attic door, even though it looked all wrong there and they both bashed their shins on it whenever they walked past. Not that Virginia argued at the time; she wouldn’t have dared. She just waited, and after Lorna’s death Joe helped her move it down the landing again, back here, to its rightful place. Joe never questioned the ins and outs of these manoeuvres; he just did as he was told. He was good like that.
And now Virginia’s got herself thinking about the attic again. She sighs heavily and looks down the landing towards the hidden door. The velvet curtain is still swaying in a draught. It was moss-green when Lorna hung it, but now it’s the colour of dust.
It’s seventy-four years to the day since Virginia last went through that door, and up the winding stairs to the top of the house. She knows she must face it again before tonight, but she’s not sure she’s ready yet. It is – or it was – to be her final act of farewell. For years and years she’s pictured herself in the twilight of her last day, climbing up to the attic, the rest of the house already shut up and in darkness. She’d sit on the broken settee for a while, closing her eyes while the ghosts gathered round, and then she’d go. Torch in hand, straight downstairs, from the attic to the marsh in a simple, swooping trajectory. Yes, that has always been the plan, but now the girl is here. Sophie. She’s forced to consider Sophie.
Virginia tuts and bangs her stick against the floor. It’s annoying – it’s hateful – but Sophie may not sleep for much longer, and goodness knows what will happen to any residual plans once she’s awake.
Virginia levers herself on to her feet with a sigh that’s nearly a groan. More stairs, she thinks. It’s a prosaic complaint in the circumstances, but such is life. She’s afraid of the attic – of course she is – but even more than that, she’s tired.
The attic is cold and dark. That’s the first thing. In her mind’s eye the attic is hot and golden, with a sun-shaped window in the east-facing gable, and needles of light piercing the roof slates here and there. But decades of polluted rain and spiders’ webs have dulled the round window, and the only thing that penetrates the roof is the drip-drip of water.
Virginia walks on bird droppings to reach the window. The wood feels spongy under her feet – no wonder when you start counting the number of missing slates – and she wonders how long it will be before it caves in and the rain falls straight through to the bedrooms, and Salt Winds really starts to die. Because Joe won’t try to rescue the place; he knows how Lorna felt about it. Perhaps he’ll sell up.
She unlatches the window and tries to pull it open, but the mechanism has warped and corroded over the years and she’s too weak to shift it. Not to worry. There won’t be much of a view over the marsh today, even from up here, not with the weather like this. That’s what she tells herself, but she continues to stand and stare at the opaque glass, as if in doubt.
When at last she turns round, she finds herself face to face with the old rocking chair. Rain or mice, or both, have nibbled away at the wicker seat and its legs are speckled with mould but it’s still in position – of course it is, why wouldn’t it be? – and Clem’s binoculars are hanging off the back, cobweb-grey and dilapidated. She touches the rocker with her foot and it moves as smoothly as it ever did, rumbling over the floorboards. Clem’s shotgun is there to
o, a few feet from the chair, its muzzle fuzzy with dust. And there’s the wireless, and the typewriter under its canvas cover; and there’s a dried-up bottle of printer’s ink with Samphire Green on the label, though all that’s left is a grey crust where the lid ought to be. And there, right by her left slipper, despite all Lorna’s desperate scrubbing, is the stain.
It’s bigger than Virginia remembered, as though it’s been spreading all these years instead of drying, as it should. She touches the edge of it with her slipper. It’s big and spattery and black, and if she didn’t know it was blood she wouldn’t guess. She’d think someone had hurled a bottle of ink across the room and shattered it on the floor. Virginia keeps pressing her fingertips against her lips, like someone in shock, and she has to remind herself that none of this is really unexpected.
All the same, she should have allowed herself longer to prepare; should have waited until this evening. To come up here on a sudden whim, after seventy-four years … She looks around for somewhere to sit, but there’s nowhere. The trestle tables are all folded away and she couldn’t use the rocking chair, even if the seat were still intact. As for the settee: it was on its last legs back then, in the early forties, and now it’s just a mound of wet sponge and rusted springs. And she can hardly bring herself to look at the mattress. It used to be yellowy-white, but now it’s brownish-black and there are mushrooms growing out of the stuffing. She shivers. The whole attic smells of fungus and droppings and rain. It smells of darkness.
Lorna was always conscious of this attic, mouldering away above the rest of the house, year in, year out. Virginia managed to pretend it wasn’t there, and made an uneasy peace with the place, but Lorna never did. Sometimes she used to threaten to sell Salt Winds and move them away for good, and she meant it – though she never quite did it.
Virginia is shivering persistently now. She’s had enough already, and steels herself for the descent, but then she stops and the hairs on her neck rise like hackles. Salt Winds is creaking – somewhere near by, beside her, below her – and this time it isn’t the cat, or the weather. It’s the sound of feet on aching boards. Light, stealthy, human feet, making their way up from the ground floor and along the landing.
The feet pause at the foot of the attic stairs (why, oh why, didn’t she think to shut the door behind her? Or at least pull the curtain across?) and a small voice calls, ‘Hello?’
December 1940
FUNNY TO THINK how disciplined the household was, in those early days. At Salt Winds, as at the orphanage, there was a proper time to bathe, and a proper time to do homework, and a proper time to go to bed. It was Virginia’s job to lay the table for supper every evening and to do the drying-up afterwards, and on Saturday mornings she helped Lorna change the sheets on the beds.
All the boring routines were instigated by Lorna or Mrs Hill, and all the best ones involved Clem. Virginia used to go along the lane with him and Bracken every morning, early, while Lorna got the breakfast ready. He would hang his binoculars round her neck and let her walk on the wall.
‘There’s Mrs Hill, turning into the lane,’ he said, a week or two before Christmas, as they trudged towards Tollbury Point with their collars turned up round their ears. Virginia squinted into the wind and Bracken yapped.
‘All right,’ said Clem, ‘here’s a challenge for you. How many birds can you spot before Mrs Hill draws level? And you can’t just say you’ve seen one, you have to name it properly too. If you get five or more I’ll give you the top off my egg. Ready? Go!’
‘No, no, no, I’m not ready! The binoculars are still in their case!’ Virginia had already whipped her mittens off, but she was all fingers and thumbs in the cold, and she couldn’t open the clasp. She jumped up and down and laughed giddily, as if he was going to tickle her. Clem hauled himself on to the wall and stood beside her in the blustery cold, and although his gloved hands looked clumsy, he removed the binoculars from their leather case in no time at all, deftly pocketing the lens caps.
‘Now,’ he said, as she lifted the binoculars and swept her gaze across the marsh.
‘Herring gull,’ she squeaked, pointing with her free arm. ‘Two of them.’
‘Oh, all right, but you only score half marks for herring gulls.’
‘That’s not fair,’ she protested, half indignant, half amused. Mrs Hill was almost upon them – she could hear the squeak of the pedals on the wind – and there wasn’t time to argue.
‘Oh, oh, oh! There! An oystercatcher!’
‘Let’s see … Very good!’
Virginia swung the binoculars slowly from side to side.
‘Oh, over there! Look! Starlings! Thousands of them! I think I just got about a million points.’
She lowered the binoculars and he clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock despair. ‘Blimey, Vi, I can’t be having that! I’ll be owing you egg tops for the rest of my days.’
Virginia twirled delightedly on her toes. Clem threw his arm round her shoulders, and she had to grab on to his coat to keep her balance. Side by side they watched the cloud of starlings as it rode the wind, twisting and curling over the marsh like smoke.
‘Bonus question for an extra million points,’ said Clem. ‘What’s the name for a flock of starlings?’
‘Murmuration,’ she shot back before he’d finished asking, and it was his turn to laugh. He pulled her closer and she huddled against the rough wool of his coat.
Mrs Hill bustled in and out of the dining room as they ate their breakfast. She was full of chatter that morning: there’d been yet more air-raids on London, and there was something wrong with the back tyre on her bike, and the wind was like a knife today – oh, and she’d met the postman on her way from the village and he’d given her the mail for Salt Winds.
Virginia had never received a letter in her life so she was puzzled, as much as excited, to receive a cream envelope with a stamp and a postmark, and her name and address in fancy copperplate. It looked too expensive to rip, so she slit it open with a clean knife.
Master Theodore Deering requests the pleasure of your company on the occasion of his eleventh birthday.
Tuesday 31st December, 2 o’clock till 5.
Thorney Grange, Tollbury Point.
RSVP
‘Oh,’ she said. If she could have pocketed it discreetly and burnt it in secret later on she would have done so, but the others were waiting. She handed the card to Clem, who glanced over it and passed it to Lorna.
‘“Requests the pleasure”,’ he muttered, slicing the top off his soft-boiled egg and sneaking it on to Virginia’s plate. ‘Typical Deering. You’d think the boy was being knighted. Or married.’
Lorna set her teacup down and read the invitation studiously, as if there might be more to it than met the eye. She flipped it over to make sure the reverse side was blank before reading it through again.
Virginia watched and waited, knotting and unknotting her fingers, but nobody seemed inclined to speak. Clem went back to his newspaper.
‘I don’t have to go, do I? Please?’
She was so vehement that Clem raised his eyes from The Times and stopped chewing. A question began to form in his expression, but he didn’t have time to phrase it.
‘Yes, you absolutely do,’ Lorna replied, pocketing the card. ‘Pass the marmalade, would you? And don’t pout.’ She began spreading marge over her toast with brisk strokes of her knife. The decision had been made, and now the Wrathmells were going to eat their breakfast and talk about something else.
Virginia picked up the marmalade jar and affected an interest in the handwritten label. She’d penned it herself back in February, while Mrs Hill padded about the kitchen, stirring the preserving pan and grumbling about the shortage of oranges.
‘Hello?’ Lorna was waiting.
Virginia wasn’t a natural rebel and her heart thundered as her fingers closed over the lid of the jar.
‘I just … I don’t see why I have to go.’
‘Don’t you?’ When Lorna shu
t her eyes like that she became cold and untouchable, like one of those statues you see in fancy gardens.
Virginia simmered and struggled. She had so much to say, and at the same time she was lost for words. There was the fact that Theodore had called her dirty, and the way in which his father had asked for a kiss. There were the nightmares in which she was stuck inside a room at Thorney Grange with one of them, or both of them, or an unsettling fusion of the two. There was the way Mr Deering had stroked his lap, and the sickly smell of the flowers he’d sent.
‘It’s not going to make any difference to Juliet,’ she mumbled, addressing the toast rack. ‘She’s still going to be dead, whether I go to her brother’s party or not.’
Clem let slip a quick smile.
‘Please don’t be stupid,’ Lorna retorted, reaching across the table and prising the marmalade from Virginia’s grasp. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’ Her voice was languid, but her fingers felt strong and cruel, as if she had it in her to smash the jar against the wall.
A small difficulty arose when Lorna remembered that the Women’s Institute were holding a New Year’s Eve party too, and that she’d volunteered to spend the day making preparations at the church hall. A few days after Christmas the chairwoman rang to remind her, and after she’d put the telephone down she tutted and fretted, but couldn’t see a way round it. She daren’t let the committee down and therefore she couldn’t deliver Virginia to the Deerings’ house in person. Clem would have to do it.
‘Clem?’ she called out, on the morning of the thirty-first. She already had her coat on and was stuffing extra pins into her wayward hair: no easy feat with a mock-apricot flan in one hand and a bag of bunting in the other. ‘You promise you won’t forget about Theodore’s party this afternoon?’
Call of the Curlew Page 8