Call of the Curlew

by Elizabeth Brooks

  ‘No.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “no”?’

  ‘I mean “No, I won’t forget.”’

  Lorna’s eyebrows rose fractionally and she scooped her handbag off the hall table. ‘It starts at two o’clock.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘His birthday present is on the kitchen table, as is your lunch. Virginia, I never got round to lengthening the hem on your red frock, but I think it’ll look all right. At least it’s clean.’

  Virginia nodded. She wished she had trouser pockets, like Clem, so she could stuff her hands inside them the way he did, and lean against the doorframe looking bored.

  ‘Bye,’ Lorna called over her shoulder. Sometimes she thought to blow a kiss when she was on her way out, but she was laden that day and didn’t have a free hand.

  The sky looked hard, like a sheet of hammered metal, and the wind sounded tired, as if it was looking for somewhere warm to rest. After an early lunch, Virginia stole up to her room, lit the gas fire and curled up on her bed with a pile of books. Even though she was on her own, all her movements were slow and soft, as if she only needed to make herself inconspicuous and Theodore’s party would pass her by.

  It was no use. She’d only just found her place in Tales from the Arabian Nights when Clem arrived, carrying her coat and scarf over one arm. She turned the page, pointedly, but he didn’t go away and in the end she had to look at him.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go,’ he said apologetically.

  Virginia sighed and closed the book, but made no further move. Clem came in and sat on the end of the bed.

  ‘What is it, Vi?’ he wondered. ‘Why don’t you want to go?’

  She frowned and leafed unseeingly through her book. If there was anyone she could tell the truth to, she supposed it was Clem, but how could she say it without dying a thousand deaths? Mr Deering saw me in my pyjamas and made me feel like I wasn’t wearing anything at all. She blushed hotly, but Clem was waiting for an answer and his eyes were on her face. Her palms began to sweat and she smoothed them over her skirt.

  ‘I just don’t like him much.’

  ‘Theodore?’

  ‘… Hmm.’

  ‘No. Well, that’s fair enough. He is a bit of a tick.’

  Virginia smiled dutifully but Clem was still watching, and he was so attentive that for a moment she thought he’d understood; actually understood, without being told. She kept running her damp hands over her skirt. There was a sour stain on one of the pleats where she’d dripped milk at breakfast, and she fixed her gaze on it while she waited for his reply.

  ‘Look, Vi, I know it’s a bore, but it’s only a few hours. You’ll survive, won’t you? Make believe it’s for king and country. I’ll never hear the end of it if I let you stay home.’ He smiled half-heartedly, without quite meeting her eye. ‘Pop your smart dress on and run a comb through your hair, there’s a good girl. Look sharp, though; we really do need to get going.’

  He shook the coat out and laid it over the bedstead. Virginia tried to imagine herself saying no, but it was impossible. She would never be able to refuse Clem anything; there was always going to be too much at stake. What if his smile died on her for ever? What if his expression froze? You couldn’t be too careful. Sometimes things were lost in the blink of an eye; in the slippage of a second. These things happened. She already knew that before the plane fell from the sky.

  It was only because she was crossing the room to fetch her dress that the aeroplane caught her eye. The whole thing was over in thirty seconds, and she would have missed it from the bed or the wardrobe.

  ‘Look!’ she cried. Clem turned back from the landing and crossed her room to look.

  It was the grace of the thing that astonished her in retrospect. You’d expect a burning fighter plane to make a great hullabaloo: howling engines, roaring flames, a great boom as it hit the ground, nose first. But if this one made any noise at all, Virginia didn’t notice. All she recalled, later on, was the slow arc it traced through the sky on its way down, like a spark floating from a bonfire. Even the explosion was gentle from their vantage point: a little orange flower that budded, bloomed and withered, all in a moment, far away on the edge of the marsh.

  She thought it was over and turned to Clem, full of astonished questions, but he was shaking her by the shoulder and pointing.

  ‘There!’ he whispered. ‘Over there!’

  She looked and saw another bit of bonfire ash, only this one was smaller and blacker than the first, and it drifted very slowly on to the marsh. It didn’t explode as it touched the ground, but disappeared among the long shadows and reed beds.

  ‘A parachute,’ he said.

  Virginia stared, and Clem was gone. By the time he returned with his binoculars there was nothing left for the naked eye, except a thread of smoke and a twisted bit of metal, which might easily be a shrub, or a wooden post, or a bit of flotsam that the tide had left behind.

  ‘I thought so!’ he said, lowering the binoculars and passing them to her. ‘It’s an enemy plane. A Messerschmitt.’

  Virginia swung the lenses back and forth over a blur of greens, greys and browns, until she found the piece of metal. It was part of a wing, and it was marked with a black and white cross. She searched for some sign of the airman, but there was no movement anywhere. There weren’t even any birds cascading through the sky or ruffling the waters. The whole stretch of marshland had an innocent air, as if nothing had happened.

  Clem took the binoculars again and stood for a long time, scanning the scene.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘D’you think he’ll drown?’ Virginia asked, noting how grown-up and unperturbed she sounded. This was partly because he was a German airman – not a Mr Rosenthal, but a proper, uncomplicated, enemy German – and partly because she didn’t quite believe he was real. The plane had swooned so gracefully, from her point of view, and the marsh looked so tranquil, that it was hard to imagine a real man out there, flailing in mud and sweat and parachute silk.

  ‘He must be two miles out, at least,’ Clem replied, which was as much as to say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will anyone go to him, d’you suppose?’

  Clem swept the scene from left to right and back again, as if searching for an answer to her question. ‘Who, though?’

  Looking back, she realised that this was the moment in which everything started to decelerate. Time slipped into a heavier gear the second Clem frowned and scratched the back of his neck and wondered ‘Who?’ He began to pace up and down the room, and she was too slow to follow the direction of his thoughts. She was only glad that he seemed to have forgotten about Theodore Deering’s party.

  The wardrobe door swung open of its own accord, and Virginia remembered she was meant to be getting changed. She hoped Clem wouldn’t spot the red dress and was relieved that he didn’t seem inclined to. He didn’t give the wardrobe a second glance, even when he nearly walked into it, but every time he passed the window he stopped and frowned at the view. He kept taking his pipe out of his pocket and tapping it against his chin.

  ‘You’re right,’ he announced suddenly, stopping in the middle of the floor.

  ‘What about?’ Virginia was only half thinking about the crashed plane. The red dress was dimly visible in the wardrobe behind him and she was trying hard not to look at it. It was hateful, with its tight collar and sash and fancy sleeves. Worst of all it was too short, which was all right when you still looked like a child, but not when you were starting not to.

  ‘You’re right,’ Clem repeated. ‘Of course you are. No-one else is going to risk their necks for some Jerry.’

  Virginia tore her eyes from the wardrobe and stared at Clem.

  ‘What …?’ She’d let her attention wander and missed the crucial moment – the link, the key – that would make sense of what he was telling her. He darted from the room and Virginia followed with her mouth open, feeling stupid. By the time she caught up he was sitting on the wo
oden chest at the top of the stairs, tightening the laces on his walking boots.

  ‘Where does Lorna keep the torch these days?’ he puffed as he leaned over, tugging on the rusty strings.

  ‘The bottom drawer in the kitchen,’ said Virginia. ‘But—’

  ‘Go and fetch it. And there’s a length of rope in the tool shed: bring that too.’

  Virginia hovered uncertainly.

  ‘Go, go! Quickly!’

  She obeyed because he was Clem, and because he seemed so certain. As she went downstairs and rummaged in the kitchen drawer, she tried to marshal her own ideas in opposition to his, but it was hard – very hard: like trying to sprint underwater. The coil of rope was hanging on a nail in the shed, and she wondered about thrusting it under the hedge and telling him she couldn’t find it, but even as she wondered she was unhooking it and running back to the house with it.

  Clem was in the hall, buttoning up his coat – the big grey one that went all the way down to his shins – and Bracken was prancing about in expectation of a walk, his stubby tail aquiver. Virginia stood and watched as Clem pocketed the torch and slung the rope over his shoulder. All of his movements were quick and calm, but he was breathing rather heavily, more like someone returning from a long walk than someone about to set out on one. ‘Rope, torch, brandy …’ he muttered, patting his pockets.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Virginia pleaded, pointlessly, when the time for protest was long gone. He ruffled her hair, smiling faintly, and reached round her for his hat and gloves. She looked up at the folds of skin round his jaw and the greying hair at his temples and felt love rising like sickness from her stomach. If she opened her mouth to speak again she thought she might actually retch, so she didn’t risk it.

  ‘Now listen,’ said Clem, as he batted the dog away. ‘If I do find this poor chap alive, he’s likely to be in a bad way, so you’ll need to be ready when we get back. Can you see to it?’

  Virginia stared at him dumbly.

  ‘Can you see to it, Vi? Light a fire in the spare room, put some blankets on the bed, boil up a big kettle of water … that sort of thing? Maybe root out the first aid kit; I think it’s in the bathroom cupboard.’

  She nodded.

  ‘If I’m not back before your mother, she’s not to get ratty. Just tell her—’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ She had to ask, although it wasn’t what she really wanted. What she really wanted was to wind the clock back ten minutes so that she could watch in absolute silence as the Messerschmitt crashed and Clem – none the wiser – wandered off down the landing. There’d be no jumping up and down this time; no childish ‘Look what I can see!’ She’d delve inside her wardrobe while the explosion flowered and wouldn’t breathe a word.

  ‘Don’t be soft,’ Clem replied. There was an edge to his gentleness; a testy reminder of all he’d ever told her about the dangers of Tollbury Marsh. ‘Off you go now, and do as I say. Tell your mother I shan’t be long. If there isn’t any sign of the poor devil after –’ he looked at his watch ‘– after an hour, I’ll give it up and come straight home. All right?’

  Virginia followed him outside, shivering in her pleated skirt and cardigan. They both lowered their heads against the wind before setting off down the lane, Bracken bounding back and forth between them. Clem’s boots made prints in the thin mud, so she placed her feet in them, like the page boy in ‘Good King Wenceslas’, and tried to imagine a miraculous warmth coming up through the soles of her shoes. It didn’t work. Her legs were bare above her ankle socks, and she could feel the goose pimples on her thighs where they brushed against one another.

  A little way along the lane there was a break in the flint wall and a flight of steps – the old harbour steps, as they were known – that led down to the marsh. Clem stopped and turned round.

  ‘Listen, Vi, I’ll be fine. The marsh is in a good mood this afternoon. I know it; I can tell.’

  She glared at her shoes and nodded.

  ‘Go back now,’ he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. He looked huge in his coat and boots, and Virginia was suddenly afraid of him. Everything around them looked dead: the empty lane, the church tower, the treeless horizon. She wondered whether anyone else had seen the German aeroplane. She half wondered whether she and Clem had made it up between them, but she could still see the wing, like a deep dent in the steel sky, and a twist of smoke above it.

  ‘Theodore’s party will be starting,’ she observed wanly.

  Clem held her at arm’s length and squeezed her shoulders. They stood like that for a moment and looked at one another, while Bracken scuttled through the dry grasses and weeds at the foot of the wall, urgently sniffing and cocking his leg.

  ‘Take Bracken back with you,’ Clem said, as he let her go. ‘I could do without him under my feet.’

  They hadn’t brought a lead, so Virginia had to pick the dog up, and by the time she’d done it Clem was several yards out from the wall. Bracken whimpered and scrabbled and twisted in her arms all the way back to Salt Winds, and she kept thinking she was going to drop him. When they got home she gave him a biscuit from the tin. He wasn’t supposed to have them at odd times, but he sounded so unhappy and she wanted to cheer him up.

  Bracken took the biscuit and carried it to his bed, where he set it down between his front paws and licked it. Virginia leaned against the stove and tried to massage some warmth back into her ears. ‘Hot water,’ she said aloud. ‘Hot water, blankets and a fire.’

  Theodore’s birthday present was lying, neatly wrapped, on the kitchen table. It was obviously a book. Virginia picked it up and turned it over in her hands, and hid it behind the flour bin so that it wouldn’t be the first thing Lorna saw when she came in. Lorna was going to be livid about the party, and no doubt Mr Deering would make sure they felt awkward about it too. It was hard to worry about all that and at the same time remember everything Clem had asked her to do. Hot water and blankets, and a fire in the spare room. And where did he say the first aid kit was kept? And when would Lorna be back? And how was she going to explain what had happened?

  She found the first aid kit and put the kettle on the range to heat, but then she lost track of what she was meant to be doing and wandered back to her bedroom. The gas fire had been blazing all this time, so she turned it off and let the chilly colours of the marsh invade her room, changing all the pinks into greys and blues. Clem had left his binoculars on the windowsill and she picked them up, but only so as to hold them on her lap and mess about with the focus.

  She shut the wardrobe door but it swung open again, and she kept glimpsing the red dress inside, turning gently on its hanger.

  When the front door banged Virginia lifted her head and dug her nails into her palms. ‘Clem?’ she said, quietly enquiring. She hadn’t realised how dark it had got: the marsh and sky were almost merged.

  ‘Clem?’ Lorna cried, leaping up the stairs two at a time. ‘Clem? Where are you? Did you hear about the German plane?’

  She ran along the landing and burst into his study, but then her footsteps halted.

  Virginia heard uncertainty in the sudden stillness. She stole along the landing and watched from the doorway as Lorna unwound her scarf and dropped it, absent-mindedly, over the back of Clem’s chair. Downstairs, the sitting-room clock began to strike, and Virginia counted all five of the chimes in her head before Lorna sensed her presence and turned.

  ‘What on earth—’ Lorna reached for the light switch and they both screwed up their eyes against the dazzle. ‘What’s going on? I thought you were at Theodore’s party?’

  Virginia didn’t reply.

  ‘Why are you in your old clothes? Where’s Clem?’

  Virginia had been calm up until then – almost lethargic – but now her heart began to flounder like a fish caught in a net.

  ‘He felt sorry for the airman,’ she said. She wanted to sound cool and reasonable about it, but her voice had taken on a breathy vibrato that she couldn’t seem to control. ‘I tried to st
op him. He said not to worry if you were back first; honestly and truly he said not to worry—’

  Lorna took Virginia by the shoulders and sat her down in the desk chair. It was obvious she felt frightened, because she stopped looking so irritated and her manner grew slow and painstaking. Her hands didn’t shake as some people’s would, but they gripped very tightly.

  ‘Look at me,’ Lorna said, but Virginia couldn’t raise her eyes beyond the pale green collar of Lorna’s blouse and the silver necklace that dangled in the shadow between her breasts. When she breathed in, she could smell the cold outdoors on her skin and clothes.

  ‘Tell me exactly what you mean,’ Lorna went on. ‘What did you try to stop him from doing?’

  ‘From going out on the marsh. He went to help the German pilot.’

  Lorna didn’t ask anything else, but Virginia could see the pulse flickering in her neck, and feel her grip growing ever more rigid.

  Lorna made a telephone call and people began arriving at the house: a police constable on his bike, several neighbours from the village, a woman with an apple cake, the vicar. Mrs Hill came, ashen-faced, in a taxi.

  Virginia weighted the front door open with the umbrella stand and they drifted in apologetically, glancing at one another and whispering – if they dared to talk at all. Lorna paced up and down the kitchen, fiddling restively with an unlit cigarette, and barely seemed to register their arrival. She kept picking at her lower lip and it started to bleed.

  Mrs Hill slumped at the table and wept into a red handkerchief, while the woman with the apple cake wondered aloud where she should put it. The young policeman fumbled in his pocket for a strip of matches, cleared his throat and asked Lorna if she needed a light, but she stared back at him as if he was speaking in Chinese and carried on pacing.

  The vicar opened the back door and a few people, including Virginia, went outside and leaned over the wall. The wind had got up, and the stinging smell of the sea blew in their faces. One of the men had brought a flashlight and he broke the blackout rules by switching it on, but there was nothing to see except a few bleak yards of grass. ‘Clem!’ he shouted, and the others joined in – ‘Clem! Cle-em!’ – but their voices were guzzled up by the wind and after a couple of minutes they gave up and trooped inside again.