‘I’ve run away from home,’ she confesses, without a trace of self-mockery. A tear trickles down her cheek and in through the corner of her mouth.
Virginia sighs. If she were sitting down she might feel more indulgent, but as things are she can only snipe.
‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I think I can guess why. They’re all stupid and none of them understands you. Is that it?’
Virginia’s hip bones feel as if they’re slowly turning to stone, and she worries she’ll never make it down the stairs. She’s damned if she’ll die up here. She’d rather throw herself out of the window, only the frame’s gone all warped and rusty, hasn’t it? So she won’t be able to open it. She presses her hand to her throat and glances round, stupidly, as if there might be another window hereabouts that she’s failed to notice before.
Sophie draws a long curved line down the window, dispersing seventy-four years’ worth of dust. She is nodding gratefully and her mouth is firm again, for the time being.
‘Exactly,’ she says with a watery sniff. ‘That’s exactly it. I just want to be myself – that’s all it is – and they won’t let me. They have all these plans …’
‘Hmm.’ It’s as much as Virginia can do to half listen. She’s surprised at how hungry she feels, given this is her last day on earth. When they get downstairs she’ll put some toast on and open a tin of baked beans – only she’ll give Joe a ring first and ask him to pop round. He’ll know what to do about Sophie. She should have phoned him in the first place.
It’s so difficult to gauge the time, but say it’s noon now … Virginia screws her eyes shut and calculates in silence. It seems reasonable to hope she’ll have the house to herself by half past one – say two o’clock to be on the safe side – which still leaves a couple of hours of daylight. And of course, she doesn’t have to set out across the marsh the moment darkness falls. She can have all evening at home, if she wants, as long as it’s all over by midnight.
‘Do you think going to art school is a cop-out?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Art school. D’you think it’d be a soft option? For me? My dad says so. His family all read law at Oxford – I mean literally all of them, dating back to the year dot – and he treats it like it’s a kind of inheritance or something, and if you don’t want to you’re just, like, a traitor to the family name or something.’
Sophie scrubs the tears off her face until her skin is burnished red and Virginia is drawn in, despite herself.
‘I’ve nothing against artists,’ she remarks. ‘I used to work for one.’
‘Oh?’ There’s something rather endearing about the way Sophie looks up, her eyes all round and hopeful, like a puppy’s.
‘You’ve heard of F. L. Leonard?’ Virginia continues, suppressing a very slight – very natural – smirk of pride.
Sophie considers for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think so …’ It’s obvious she’s disappointed, but she’s nice enough to ask, ‘What was your job?’
Virginia shrugs. ‘Oh, I was a Jack-of-all-trades really,’ she says, though she regrets her modesty immediately, as the girl turns back to the window and resumes her finger drawing. ‘Well, I suppose you might say I was a secretary, or – what would you call it these days? – a personal assistant. It was a good life. We travelled a good deal. There was a lot of interest in the States.’
But Sophie isn’t listening. She’s drawing a face in the dust, but she can’t get the nose right. Impatiently, she wipes her palm through the whole thing, clearing a space in the glass, and suddenly they’re no longer looking at spiders’ webs and dirt-filtered light. They’re looking, instead, at a grand vista.
The clouds have moved away, leaving a smattering of snow behind, and the horizon is visible for the first time all day – though whether that daub of crushed pearl belongs to sea or sky or both is anyone’s guess. Aside from the tracery of snow, all the colours are dark and strong, smeared straight from the tube in immense swathes of Yellow Ochre and Prussian Green and Payne’s Grey. It’s vast and simple. It would take a bold artist to paint Tollbury Marsh in this mood, thinks Virginia. There’s no charm in it. Nothing to break it up, except the quick flit of a bird here and there, and the odd wooden post.
‘Oh!’ Sophie exclaims. ‘It’s so … It’s beautiful.’ She wipes a larger circle in the dust and kneels down so that she can get closer to the glass and take in more of the view. Underneath all the vestiges of distress – the wet face, the pink eyes, the liquid sniffs – there is a core of joy. You can see it in the way she bites her lower lip as she leans this way and that to get a better angle.
‘It is beautiful,’ Virginia agrees reluctantly. After a moment she gives up on the marsh and watches Sophie instead.
‘I knew I was right to come here,’ Sophie says, looking round at Virginia and then back at the marsh. ‘I knew it, just from the name. Salt Winds. It’s just so … I don’t know … Every time they said it, it was kind of like it was speaking to me. Does that sound really lame?’
Virginia’s eyes come back into focus and she leans forwards on the stick. Several questions present themselves, but she’s not sure where to start. Sophie is busy cleaning the window again; her question was rhetorical and she’s not expecting an answer.
‘You came here on purpose?’ Virginia asks. ‘You came especially to look at Salt Winds? But I thought you just … Well, I don’t know …’
The girl is only half listening as she spits exultingly on her cuff and polishes the glass.
‘And where exactly did you come from?’ Virginia goes on, more briskly. It occurs to her that Joe can run the girl home in his car. In fact, if he’s agreeable, that might be for the best. It’ll save getting the parents involved.
‘London.’
‘London?’
‘Mm.’ Sophie glances round, surprised by Virginia’s surprise. She sniffs again, and wipes her dusty sleeve across her nose. ‘Putney,’ she clarifies, before sneezing wetly into her cupped hands.
‘Putney?’ Virginia rummages in her dressing-gown pocket for a handkerchief. ‘You came all the way to Tollbury Point from Putney?’
She pulls a balled-up tissue from her pocket and the old wedding photograph comes with it. Sophie wipes her palms and blows her nose as Clem and Lorna flutter to the floor with their posy of grey flowers and their grey half-smiles.
‘Oh my God!’ Sophie exclaims, as she stoops to pick it up. The joy, or excitement, or whatever it is, has got inside her voice now.
‘What?’ Virginia urges, clutching the handle of her stick with both hands. ‘What is it?’
Sophie points at the photo and smiles like a simpleton.
‘I knew it,’ she says. ‘I knew it! Look. That’s my great-granddad.’
January 1941
TRUE TO HIS word, Mr Deering dropped by first thing on New Year’s Day, and Virginia had to let him in because Lorna wasn’t ready. In fact, neither of them was ready, but Virginia was at least dressed, albeit in yesterday’s grubby skirt and cardigan. Lorna was still in her dressing gown, her uncombed hair straggling down her back.
Virginia admired that dressing gown of Lorna’s enormously. It was slate-green, like a stormy sea, almost long enough to sweep the floor, and made of something silky which wasn’t actually silk. And yet, that morning it seemed to have lost all its film-star glamour. It made Lorna look chilly and tired and definitely not what Mrs Hill – or Clem, for that matter – would call ‘proper’.
Virginia would have ignored Mr Deering’s knock altogether, only Lorna kept hissing, ‘Hurry up and open the door! He doesn’t like to wait!’ and she sounded so urgent about it that Virginia didn’t dare argue. She was too tired to care much, anyway. The whole scenario – like the preceding night – felt as slow and detached as a dream; the foggy interlude between Clem’s departure and his eventual return. She held the door open a couple of inches and Mr Deering sidled in, smooth as a snake. His arms were full of flowers – great perfumed blooms that seemed out of place in a wartime w
inter – and he tossed them on to the hall table, as if they were nothing much.
‘Any news?’ he asked as he shrugged off his coat. Virginia stared at the white lilies and shook her head. Their petals were like pale, rubbery tongues, and they made the hall smell of funerals. Lorna was creeping upstairs, but Mr Deering caught sight of her before she made it to the landing, and when he said her name she turned and came to meet him.
‘Hello, Max!’ she said, as if this was a nice surprise, and at the same time she pulled the dressing gown tight about her throat. ‘I was just going to get dressed. Give me five minutes?’
He shook his head.
‘Less than that,’ she pleaded. ‘Two.’
But Mr Deering shook his head again and placed his fingers under her chin, tilting it ever so slightly upwards. He looked especially glossy this morning, as if he’d rubbed his skin and hair with the same wax polish he used on his car. He stood still for a good minute, studying Lorna’s bare face at arm’s length, and all the time his lips moved playfully without quite breaking into a smile.
‘No,’ he said, eventually. ‘Don’t go. You’re lovely as you are. Besides, I’m gasping for my cup of tea.’
‘I expect we all are.’ Lorna pushed a tangle of hair out of her eyes and tried to smile, but it was difficult to look bright and breezy with someone’s fingertips pressing up against your jaw. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
He ran his thumb down her cheek, touching the corner of her mouth, and dropped his hand.
‘Vi can do that.’ He turned to Virginia and slipped her a private wink. ‘You can make us all a cuppa, can’t you?’
Virginia nodded, but she was only half relieved to escape to the kitchen while they made their way to the sitting room. She stoked the range impatiently – pushing Bracken away when he ambled over in search of his breakfast – and slammed the half-filled kettle down on top. Hurry up, hurry up, she muttered inwardly, as she dusted biscuit crumbs off the tray and grabbed three cups from the draining board, shaking them dry. The milk had been out all night and it smelled like cheese, but it would have to do.
While the water began heaving its way towards the boil she leaned into the hall and listened. After a long time she heard Mr Deering speak from behind the sitting-room door. A minute passed – two minutes – and Lorna replied. Armchair springs creaked as someone sat down, and then there was silence. Virginia glanced urgently at the kettle and took the teapot down from the shelf. She wondered what Clem would have her do. She didn’t want him to be cross with her when he got back.
Two whole hours Mr Deering stayed, although he must have known he wasn’t wanted. Lorna perched on the sofa, her untasted tea going cold in her hands, and Virginia sat beside her, stone-faced, like a middle-aged chaperone from Victorian times. It was damp and cold in the sitting room (it was rarely used, except for visitors) but Lorna didn’t offer to light the fire. Her gaze strayed, now and then, to the window and the lowering clouds.
Virginia wondered what it would take to embarrass Mr Deering. He sank back in the old armchair, slurping his tea and making trite observations like, ‘Damned Germans …’ and ‘If anyone can get the better of that old marsh, it’s Clem.’ When no-one replied he just smoked and smiled and watched them through half-closed eyes.
‘Looks like we might have snow,’ he remarked at one point, following Lorna’s gaze to the window. ‘That’ll please Theo, I hope.’
Lorna straightened her shoulders and fixed her smile, as if she’d just remembered she had a guest. ‘And how is Theo?’
Mr Deering frowned and ran his finger slowly round the rim of the cup. ‘Oh, well. He’s fine, all things considered. Doesn’t say much. I think he enjoyed his birthday party yesterday.’
Virginia watched him as he was speaking and thought she glimpsed his dead daughter lurking, like a delicate pencil sketch, beneath the coarsely painted lines of his day-to-day face. So that’s what it took to discomfit him. Of course. Well, it was a relief to know there was something. She relaxed ever so slightly, but when he looked up she saw he’d gone all misty about the eyes and that seemed to make him worse – more dangerous – than before.
‘It’s easier for me, in a way, than it is for you,’ he said softly, setting the empty cup on the tray. ‘At least, with Jules, I knew. There was never this dreadful uncertainty.’
When he said that, Lorna had no choice but to look up, and it was as if he’d caught her in a spell, because he held her gaze for ages and ages and ages. Seconds ticked by on the clock – Virginia counted twenty-three – before he sighed and ran his hands over his face. Lorna sat very still, her fingers knotted in her lap, and breathed as if she was trying not to scream.
They all jumped when the front door opened and footsteps crossed the hall. Mr Deering shot to his feet but Lorna said, ‘It’s only Mrs Hill.’
‘Mrs Hill? Oh, yes.’ Mr Deering clasped his fidgety hands behind his back and took a turn of the room, stopping at the mantelpiece mirror to slick his hair and study his moustache. ‘Yes. Well, I’d best be making a move, if you’re sure you can manage.’
Virginia watched him discreetly from under her eyelids, and saw the way his forefinger trembled as it slid over the line of hair on his upper lip. What a fright he’ll have, she thought, when Clem really does come back.
He caught her eye in the mirror and smiled. ‘I’ll drop in again, some time this evening.’
‘Oh, but really—’ Lorna protested weakly, getting to her feet. Mr Deering took hold of her chin again, only this time he didn’t just prop it up, he gripped it between his thumb and his knuckle.
‘But of course I will, Lorna,’ he said. ‘It’s only natural I should worry about you. Isn’t it, though?’
As soon as he’d released her she nodded, and a split-second later she remembered to smile as well. His thumbnail had made a pink crescent moon on her skin.
When he’d gone, Lorna picked up the bouquet from the hall table and handed it to Virginia.
‘Put these in some water, would you?’ she said, wearily. ‘There’s a vase under the kitchen sink. And just check Mrs Hill’s all right. I’m not sure I can face her, on top of everything else.’
Virginia wasn’t especially keen to face her either; there was a lot of angry clattering going on behind the kitchen door. It sounded as though Mrs Hill had decided to clean the cupboards in Clem’s absence. Bracken was scratching diffidently on the back door while saucepan lids crashed and spun like cymbals.
‘No, wait!’ Virginia bounded up the stairs after Lorna, scattering yellow pollen in her wake. ‘Wait!’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, what?’ Lorna wheeled round, just inside her bedroom door. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get dressed.’
Virginia pushed the flowers at her would-be mother, crushing them against the V-neck of her dressing gown and staining the lapels with gold-brown dust. Lorna hadn’t much choice but to take them in her arms, though a couple of stalks missed and tumbled to the floor.
‘What—?’
‘They’re your flowers; you put them in water.’ Virginia had to fight so hard for breath between each word, she thought she must be having some sort of fit. ‘You’re married to Cl— to Clem; you’ve no business taking flowers off another man. It’s disgusting.’
She hadn’t meant, when she started, to use a word like ‘disgusting’; neither had she meant her voice to waver up and down. She half expected a slap on the cheek and braced herself, tight-jawed, but Lorna only sighed and leaned against the doorframe. Two more lilies dropped from her hands while she considered how to reply.
‘He’ll only want to know where I’ve put them,’ she explained, eventually. You could tell from her voice that she hadn’t slept all night; she sounded as though she’d keel over if the doorframe weren’t propping her up. ‘That’s all it is. He’s one of those people who always ask after their own gifts. He likes to make sure they’re being enjoyed.’
‘So?’ Virginia wept. ‘Tell him you put them str
aight in the dustbin! We don’t want his stinking flowers! Why d’you have to do whatever he wants?’
Lorna’s shoulders drooped. She drifted into the bedroom and stood in front of the mirror. Virginia followed, grinding the flowers into the rug with her shoes.
‘Why?’ she persisted.
Lorna placed a couple of hairpins between her teeth and began brushing her hair with long, languid strokes. Virginia stood behind and glared at her reflection.
‘Tell me why.’
‘I feel sorry for him.’ Lorna shrugged. ‘Of course I do. His wife’s dead, his daughter …’
‘Are you in love with him?’
Lorna closed her eyes. She rolled her hair up to the nape of her neck and stabbed it with one of the pins. ‘No, I am not.’
‘Then why d’you act like you are?’
The pin dropped, spilling hair all the way down Lorna’s back again. She growled and threw the brush across the dressing table.
‘I’m thinking of you, aren’t I?’ Lorna wheeled round, pressing her hands to her temples. ‘Of you and me. We’re alone, Virginia, do you understand me? We are two women alone in this big, empty house. We cannot afford to make an enemy of Max Deering.’
‘But Clem—’
‘Clem is not here.’
They stared at one another. Lorna said it again, only this time she said it slowly and roundly, as if she were talking to a simpleton.
‘Clem. Is. Not. Here.’
Virginia’s eyes stung, as if they were filling up with acid instead of ordinary tears. When Lorna began to dress, she just stood in the middle of the room and watched through the blur, unable to move away because of the shuddering in her knees. She tried to say, ‘I hate you,’ but it came out as a small, blubbery noise, which Lorna affected not to hear.
Lorna got ready with uncharacteristic haste, leaving the dressing gown in a slippery heap on the floor and laddering her first stocking on a toenail. Normally she’d have folded it up and put it in the mending basket, but on this occasion she tossed it to the end of the bed with a curse. She didn’t choose her clothes, she just grabbed them from the cupboard – a grey tartan skirt, a holly-green sweater darned at the elbows – and threw them on. When she was done, she had another stab at fixing her hair, but the pins kept falling out so she bundled it up inside a headscarf and left it at that.
Call of the Curlew Page 11