Call of the Curlew

by Elizabeth Brooks

  ‘But the way you act with him,’ Virginia resumed, as soon as her voice allowed it. ‘It’s as if you owe him something. And don’t say you’re doing it for me, because it’s always been like that, ever since I first came to Salt Winds.’

  Lorna picked up a lipstick and unscrewed the cap, staring at the greasy red tip as if she’d forgotten what to do with it. She seemed dreamy and tired again.

  ‘The thing is, you see …’ She put the lipstick down, unused. ‘The thing is … Max and I were engaged, once upon a time. But then I married Clem instead, and Max was … Well, you can imagine. He doesn’t like to be crossed. Nor will he admit defeat.’

  Lorna lifted a pearl necklace from her jewellery box and, after a moment, began to fasten it at the back of her neck. Virginia watched her. The scene in the mirror was so peaceful that she was almost taken in by it. They looked like two girls in an old Dutch painting, with all the even light and stillness that implied. A Lady with Her Maid, or something along those lines. As Lorna lowered her arms, snowflake shadows began sliding down the bare wall opposite the window.

  ‘It’s probably the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,’ Lorna observed.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Breaking it off with Max.’

  Virginia looked up hopefully. ‘And you did it because you were in love with Clem?’

  Lorna closed the lid of her jewellery box and rested her fingertips on the lid. ‘I suppose that’s what I told myself at the time. It’s what I told everyone else.’ She hesitated before pushing the box away. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you, though. What are you – twelve? Too young for such nonsense.’

  I’m eleven, Virginia thought, but she didn’t say so. She went to the window to watch the snowfall and thought of Clem out there on the marsh, waiting for the conditions to come right so that he could walk safely home. He must be starving by now. At least he wouldn’t be thirsty, because there’d be snow to eat. She pictured him in her mind’s eye, sitting on a tussock of grass and sticking out his tongue to catch the falling flakes.

  The bedroom was growing darker by the second, as if night was coming on at reckless speed, and a knock on the half-open door made them jump.

  ‘Who is it?’ Lorna called breathlessly, but it was only Mrs Hill, stepping over the broken lilies.

  ‘Pardon me, Mrs Wrathmell.’ Mrs Hill’s face was lined with sorrow, as if she’d been crying for years, but her mouth was zipped up tight, which made it difficult to say anything kind, because you felt you’d get your head snapped off if you tried. She peered round at the silky tumble of dressing gown, the open lipstick, the carpet of lilies, the pearls round Lorna’s neck. ‘I was only wondering how many there’d be for lunch?’

  The question was loaded with a hostility that made Lorna stare. She began pointing from person to person. ‘One … two … three,’ she counted leadenly, like someone teaching numbers to a child. ‘There would appear to be three of us at home today.’

  ‘Oh, don’t include me. I shan’t eat a thing,’ Mrs Hill retorted. ‘I only wondered whether you were expecting any gentlemen friends? Max Deering …?’

  Virginia looked fearfully from Lorna to Mrs Hill. It struck her that the household had no meaning without Clem; until he returned Salt Winds was nothing but a big, cold structure and three strangers standing in a room.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ Lorna elbowed past Mrs Hill and broke into a run on the landing. Virginia listened to her flying up the attic stairs and pacing about overhead. Her steps were bolder – fiercer – than they used to be, when she went up there at night.

  ‘Slut!’ Mrs Hill muttered, under her breath.

  ‘Don’t speak about her like that!’ Virginia wiped her wet face on her cardigan sleeve. ‘You wouldn’t say things like that if Clem were here!’

  ‘No, I’d just think it, and so would he.’ Mrs Hill began picking lilies off the floor. ‘He knew, all right. He knew what he’d married.’

  ‘Stop!’ When Virginia stamped her foot she felt as though the house was about to collapse on top of them; she could almost hear the fractures spreading out from under her shoe, over all the floors and walls. ‘Stop! You’ve no right to say such awful things! Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Who do I …?’ Mrs Hill laughed shortly and straightened up. ‘Who do I think I am?’

  She stared at Virginia, and Virginia stared right back.

  ‘Forty-eight years,’ Mrs Hill quavered. ‘Forty-eight years I’ve served this family, and look what’s left …’ Her eyes filled and she threw the flowers at Virginia’s feet, like a sarcastic tribute.

  ‘You can get your own lunch,’ she said, and five minutes later she marched from the house and slammed the front door hard behind her.

  Even so, Virginia needn’t have been lonely. People were calling at the house all afternoon – not just the young police constable and neighbours from last night, but friends and official-looking men from further afield. The first few times Virginia went downstairs and told them Lorna was asleep, and they went away again, having nothing urgent to say or do. After a while she stopped answering the door.

  It wasn’t until dusk that the strange man appeared in the back garden. Virginia was sitting on the windowsill, hugging her knees, when his moving shadow caught her eye. Bracken pricked up his ears and gave a low growl, but after a moment’s thought he seemed to doubt his instincts and went back to sleep on the bed. Virginia made herself small and still, and kept watching.

  The snow made such a whirl against the window, and the light was so poor, and she’d been willing Clem to appear for so long that she thought, at first, she’d conjured up a phantom. She only glimpsed the man for a moment as he staggered across the grass, back bent, and slipped inside the tool shed, but even so, phantom or not, it obviously wasn’t him. True, his coat was long and grey, like Clem’s, but it was plastered with mud, and the body inside it was nothing like Clem’s: it was too tall and slim, and too guarded in its movements.

  Virginia waited for the next thing to happen – after all, he couldn’t mean to stay in the tool shed – but the light thickened, and nothing moved. After five minutes had passed, she slid to her feet. She was oddly glad, because at least it gave her an excuse to find Lorna.

  Lorna was just visible through the crack in the attic door, lying on the old mattress with her hands behind her head. It was too dark to tell whether she had her eyes closed, or whether she was staring up at the rafters. There was a pile of papers on the floor beside her with a packet of cigarettes on top, and the air tasted sharply of smoke. It was freezing up here and the round window was spattered with snow, but Lorna had wrapped herself up in a couple of moth-eaten blankets, and she looked comfortable enough. The shape of her head and arms reminded Virginia of that faraway look she’d had, last night, in the bath.

  She jumped up when Virginia knocked, and shoved the papers under the mattress.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Virginia, I’ve left you alone too long …’

  ‘There’s a man in the garden.’

  Lorna stopped fidgeting with her hair and lowered her arms.

  ‘Clem?’ she whispered, following Virginia’s example.

  ‘No, not Clem, just this strange man … I don’t know … he ran across the grass into the shed.’

  They started down the stairs together, quickly and quietly, Lorna leading the way. A sudden inspiration made Virginia raise her voice.

  ‘Maybe it’s Mr Rosenthal?’

  ‘Mr Rosenthal? You mean the knife-grinder?’ Lorna sounded less than convinced. ‘What would he be doing in our shed?’

  ‘Maybe he’s escaped from the police. That would explain why he looked so furtive: he’s looking for somewhere to hide.’

  Lorna didn’t say anything. Virginia followed her to Clem’s study and watched as she rummaged in his desk for a key, before unlocking the corner cupboard. The twilight was heavier in here than in her bedroom because the furnishings were dark and the walls were lined
with leather books.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Taking the weight in both hands, Lorna lifted a long cloth bundle from the cupboard and laid it gently on the rug. There was a peculiar smell – an exciting smell – as the cloths fell away, a bit like the whiff of sulphur you get when you strike a match.

  Virginia crouched down as Lorna drew back the last fold.

  ‘I didn’t know Clem kept a shotgun.’

  ‘It’s not loaded,’ Lorna whispered. ‘But it looks the part. We may as well take it.’

  They didn’t bother with hats and coats – it seemed a bit fussy in the circumstances – but the wellingtons were waiting in a row by the back door, so they put them on. Virginia waited to be told to return to her room – Clem would have insisted on it ages ago – but it never seemed to cross Lorna’s mind. She even asked Virginia to hold the shotgun while she shook a stone from one of her boots.

  ‘Ready?’ Lorna whispered, taking the weapon back and crooking her finger round the trigger. Virginia nodded, caught halfway between gratitude and mild resentment. This wasn’t the sort of thing proper mothers got up to with their juvenile daughters. On the other hand, it was exciting.

  The wet snow flew in their faces, as if it was coming up off the marsh instead of down from the sky. The flakes were beginning to collect on top of the flint wall and alongside the house, but the lawn was still pulpy with mud. Side by side they ploughed the few yards to the shed, their heads bowed, while the wind whipped their hair and clothes. Virginia almost took hold of Lorna’s hand – she would have taken hold of Clem’s in much less dramatic circumstances – but she decided not to, for fear of seeming childish. Besides, Lorna needed both hands for the gun.

  There was no temptation to dither in such wild weather. Whoever was – or wasn’t – lurking in the shed, they needed to find out quickly. Lorna gestured to Virginia to unlatch the door, and as soon as it was done she swung it open with the toe of her boot.

  It may have been dark, but there was undoubtedly someone there; the air was vibrating with his efforts to shiver quietly. There was a moment of stillness before the hoe fell off its nail in the wall and something else clattered against the wheelbarrow, and Lorna swallowed, raising the shotgun higher. Virginia saw a tall shape against the back wall, and the gleam of an eye, and two pale palms held up in surrender.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  He definitely wasn’t English. His teeth were chattering so violently it was difficult to glean much else from his voice, beyond the obvious fact that he was cold. He smelled of wet wool and mud. Normally the shed smelled of dry compost and tarpaulin.

  ‘Is it Mr Rosenthal?’ Virginia murmured, standing on tiptoe to look over Lorna’s shoulder. There was something about him – his accent, and the shadowy shape of his body, and his fugitive presence here at Salt Winds – that convinced her. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  Lorna’s fingers tightened round the gun.

  ‘Virginia?’ she said, in a shaky approximation of her usual voice. ‘I want you to run back to the house and telephone the police.’

  ‘Please, no,’ said the man, stepping forwards. ‘Please just … wait.’ His hands were still raised, but he was opening them out in a pleading gesture, instead of holding them up, either side of his head.

  ‘Oh God.’ Lorna spoke so quietly that the words were more like shapes in the darkness than actual sounds. As she readjusted her hold on the shotgun, her wedding ring clinked against the hollow barrel.

  ‘Virginia, do as I say.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now!’

  Virginia trudged back to the house, but she didn’t go straight in. She stood on the back step for several minutes, rubbing her arms and peering out in the direction of the marsh. The snowflakes hurtled towards her face, and she stared at them for so long that she lost her bearings and began to feel as though it was she who was hurtling towards them.

  ‘Clem,’ she whispered, in case that was the magic word that would bring him back, but the wind blotted it against her lips instead of carrying it out to sea. She waited a minute, repeating the spell, but he didn’t materialise, so she turned into the kitchen. Her socks were all wet and she couldn’t get her wellies off by herself, so she kept them on and made a trail of watery footprints across Mrs Hill’s clean floors.

  The telephone table was underneath the window by the front door. Virginia went towards it – she even picked up the receiver – but she didn’t dial. She kept picturing the black police van that would take Mr Rosenthal away. Mr Deering was bound to be on the scene – one way or another he’d come, even if it wasn’t any of his business – and what if he started stamping and screaming like last time? What if the police let him? With Clem away, there’d be nobody to intervene. She set the phone down, her fingers tight round the receiver, and tried to stop shivering.

  The back door opened again and a flurry of wind moved through the house, stirring curtains and banging doors. Lorna must be bringing him inside, because there was a brief exchange of voices and the sound of a chair being pulled back. A few seconds later the curtains were drawn with a rackety noise and the kitchen light came on.

  Virginia kept her fingers tight around the black receiver, listening as the door of the range clanged open and new coal was scattered over the fire. Lorna asked a short question, which was followed – inexplicably – by a swishing sound, like scissors cutting through cloth. Now the visitor was talking, quietly and rapidly, and Lorna was saying, ‘Hush, hush.’ Virginia let go of the telephone and crept up to the kitchen door.

  The man was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped up in Bracken’s hairy blanket. His coat was heaped in Lorna’s arms, a dripping mess of mud and snow, one of its sleeves slashed open and hanging down. He did not match Virginia’s mental image of Mr Rosenthal. For some reason she’d had him down as long-faced and grey, with bony cheeks and wise eyes. She’d never have guessed he was beautiful.

  He watched Lorna as she dumped the coat’s filthy remains by the back door and crossed the kitchen to the sink. He was cradling one of his hands against his chest, and Virginia noticed that the fingers were all purple and swollen, which at least explained the scisssored coat sleeve. Lorna spent a long time washing her hands under the tap without saying anything or looking round. Virginia was glad she’d abandoned the shotgun; perhaps it implied a change of heart. The weapon was propped up against the dresser, with drops of snow rolling down its muzzle, and Bracken was giving it a good sniff. He didn’t seem remotely interested in the visitor.

  ‘I’ll try and bind it, if you want,’ Lorna said, turning off the tap but continuing to face the sink. ‘You ought to see a doctor though.’

  The man couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the back of Lorna’s head, although there was nothing unusual – as far as Virginia could see – about her knotted scarf and the few stray corkscrews of hair. Lorna held on to the edge of the sink as she waited for him to reply, but he remained silent. In the end she swung round to face him and, in doing so, spotted Virginia lurking in the doorway.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded briskly, drying her hands on a tea towel. Her face was so rosy you’d think she’d been sitting right next to a fire. ‘Have you telephoned?’

  Virginia shook her head and Lorna raised her eyebrows a fraction. She came out to the hall, pulling the door to behind her.

  ‘You haven’t?’ she whispered. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ Virginia twined her fingers nervously. ‘Clem likes Mr Rosenthal.’

  They were standing face to face, almost touching, but Lorna was no more than a silhouette against the dim wallpaper. Virginia readied herself for an argument – Lorna and the law versus Mr Rosenthal – but before anything was said, something cold touched her wrist. Lorna had taken hold of her hand.

  ‘Vi?’ she said softly. ‘Listen. I have to tell you something about … that man. It’s—’

  She stopped. Virginia wasn’t interested in grown-up generalisations, and did
n’t want to hear Lorna’s thoughts on enemy aliens and internment camps, but she waited anyway, out of polite habit. The silence went on. Lorna seemed to be staring towards the front door, as if she’d lost her train of thought.

  ‘Oh no,’ she muttered, dropping Virginia’s hand and walking swiftly to the window. ‘Oh no, no, no. Not now. Not now!’

  Virginia hardly needed to look, but she turned anyway and watched Mr Deering’s car approach the house.

  It was difficult to explain that car’s pull on her imagination – not without sounding silly – but there was something about its predatory grace that made it seem like a living thing. The lane from Tollbury Point to Salt Winds was pitted with holes and bumps, but Mr Deering’s Austin 12 never seemed to mind. It just glided forwards, silent and slow, the way a shark glides over the ocean floor.

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  FOR A BRIEF, giddying moment Virginia thinks the girl is trying to claim Clem as her great-granddad. But Sophie isn’t looking at Clem. She’s pointing at a blur in the upper-right-hand corner of the photograph, a figure hardly worthy of the name, which consists of little more than a jacket collar and a slice of trilby hat.

  ‘You can’t see him very well,’ Sophie says. ‘But it’s definitely him … I can tell.’

  Virginia can also tell, now that Sophie has pointed him out. There are a dozen people milling about in the door of the church, and he’s right at the back of the group, turning away, half obscured by someone’s fox-fur stole. Virginia takes the photo out of Sophie’s hand and stares. She must have known already, and mentally blocked it out. She must. How many years is it, after all, since she really studied this picture?

  ‘Let me think. He’s my dad’s … dad’s … dad,’ Sophie explains. There’s something rather sweet about her pride, but it vanishes in a blink and she looks much older as she says, ‘It’s his fault about the Oxford thing, really. He was the first to go and read law, and then he made his son go too, and then my dad. And now Dad and Granddad are both on at me.’