‘He didn’t, did he?’ Sophie’s voice has gone all whispery and she’s stopped stroking the cat. This time she’s not going to flit straight to her next question. You can tell. This time she’s going to wait for an answer.
Virginia takes her time. She pulls herself up and wheezes over to the sink, where she pours her tea away. Milk solids clump together in the plughole and she tries to push them down with her fingers. There’s no view through the kitchen window, with its grimy curtain of sweat, so she doesn’t look up. She doesn’t have to see the marsh to know it’s there. It’s present in the creeping darkness and the failing colours and the sing-song wind.
‘You’re right,’ she agrees. ‘There was more to it than that.’
She can feel Sophie’s gaze on her back, like an itch she can’t reach, and her shoulders shift uncomfortably. She runs some water into the kettle, just for something to do, and empties it again. She sets the kettle down on the sideboard.
‘The thing is,’ she says, ‘it’s not really something I can tell you.’
‘Oh, please!’
Silver objects to the plaintive rise of Sophie’s voice. He jumps off her lap and starts making up to Virginia instead, rubbing her knotty ankles with his forehead. When she pushes him away with her stick, he nudges that instead and purrs.
‘What I mean is, it’s not something I can tell you. It’s something I have to show you.’
‘Oh. OK.’ That’s stumped the girl. She doesn’t know what to ask next. Where? Why? What? In the end she plumps for the latter.
‘What d’you have to show me? Sorry … I don’t understand.’
Virginia glances up at the window – not for the view, but for the blur of her guest’s reflection. She wishes she hadn’t asked her name when they first met this morning. It confuses things. She keeps thinking of her as Sophie now, whereas she would like to be able to think of her as simply the girl or, even better, the Deering girl. Sophie is rather a nice name. It means ‘wisdom’ in Greek, if she remembers correctly. She looks down again. There are still lumps of sour milk clogging the plughole.
‘You can manage a walk this evening, can’t you?’ she asks. ‘You feel well enough now?’
‘Oh yes, I’m fine. But … a walk? Where to? I don’t really know …’
Silver jumps on to the sideboard and starts dabbing with his paw at the Go-Cat bag. He chirrups as Virginia reaches for his bowl.
‘I can’t tell you anything else.’ Virginia’s hands fall still as she concentrates on what she’s saying; on trying to make her voice sound roguish and enticing. Silver yowls and butts his head against the empty bowl. ‘It’s only a short walk. Perhaps a couple of miles? It’ll be better if I show you. Clearer.’
That’s an outright lie, of course. Virginia pictures the weave and whirl of tide and sand, foam and wind, solidity and void. She pictures the points of the compass falling in on themselves and disappearing under the snow-flecked mud. Clarity is one thing Sophie Deering will not find two miles out on Tollbury Marsh.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ the girl objects, ‘and you were wanting to eat.’
The cat biscuits chink into the metal bowl. Silver thrusts his head under Virginia’s arm and starts to gollop before she’s finished pouring.
‘Oh, we can walk there in the dark.’ She tries to sound offhand. ‘I’ve got a torch, and I can lend you a coat and some wellies.’
Of course the child will refuse. She’ll say she’s not that curious, not that stupid, and then she’ll walk away intact. Nothing can stop her. Virginia looks down at her own twisted hands. The skin is so thin, the veins so blue, the bones so light. They could be the hands of a ghost. How can she make anyone do anything? There’s no strength in her. She strokes Silver from his ears to the root of his tail and he doesn’t even flinch.
Suddenly the cat looks too far away, and yet the clicking, mashing noise of his teeth is becoming louder, as if he’s eating inside her ear. Virginia grips the edge of the sink with both hands. She’s going to faint. She’s going to be sick. She’s going to die on her own kitchen floor, watched over by a Deering.
She leans against the cupboard and listens to the fluttering of her own pulse. She draws a careful breath, and then another, and then another. The blurry girl in the window is uncrossing her denim legs and rubbing her palms uneasily over her knees.
‘OK then,’ she’s saying. Her voice sounds remote, as if she’s speaking through a telephone. ‘Why not? I’m up for it.’
May 1941
VIRGINIA WORE HER winter coat on top, as usual, in case Lorna spotted her leaving the house. She didn’t remove it until she reached the old harbour steps, and even then she unbuttoned reluctantly, with furtive glances to left and right. This was always the worst part of the whole process – worse than losing her shoe in the sand that time, back in March – but it had to be done. At least the ritual didn’t require her to go naked.
Virginia folded the coat and laid it on top of the wall. She looked down at herself and gave her hem a tug. In some ways the red dress was worse than nakedness. It had looked all right when she was only ten; she hadn’t minded wearing it to the school concert last Easter. Even in December – on the fateful day of Theo’s party, when it had remained safe and snug inside the wardrobe – it was still halfway decent. But she’d had a growth spurt since then, and the red dress wasn’t meant to have breasts inside it – not even small ones. It wasn’t that sort of dress. Wearing it was anguish: worse than any physical pain she could imagine. But that was the point.
She gave the dress a final tug and started down the steps. The marsh was playing all innocent this morning, making out it had no secrets. There were still a few veils of mist drifting over the ground, but wherever they parted she glimpsed streaks of gold, which must have been water but looked like pure light. A skylark was hovering and singing, too high up to see, and the wind – such as it was – came and went, touching Virginia’s skin and toying with her hair. In some ways she preferred the marsh in a drearier mood, when the wind cut across her bare legs and the waters were as dull as lead. At least then she felt as though she was doing something dangerous; something that deserved a return.
She walked quickly to begin with, because the first quarter-mile was familiar and no longer frightening. If Virginia had still been given to laughing, she could have laughed at the memory of her first forays, back in January: how she’d paused to test the ground between every step, and raced back to the wall with her heart in her mouth after half a dozen paces. These days she strode through the periphery, pushing through the stiff, knee-high grass, impatient to reach the danger zone.
It was only when the turf became thinner and more springy that Virginia began to slow and look back towards the wall, and feel how far she was from safety. She would stop, force herself on, stop again – frightened by the gushing of waters she couldn’t see and conscious that her soles were starting to leak. One more step, she’d dare herself. One more. Till that post comes level with the church tower. Till you can dip your hand in that channel of water. Till you’ve stood with both feet on that strip of sand.
During January and February Virginia had made steady progress – a few more yards each time – but it had ended in mid-March, the day she lost her shoe. The mud had pulled on her foot, really pulled, like something wilful and alive, and although she’d freed herself without much difficulty she still remembered the slow, sucking relish with which it had swallowed her left shoe. In retrospect, she supposed she ought to have knelt down and tried to fish it out again, but she was glad she hadn’t. There was a dark pleasure to be had from imagining her familiar brown sandal, with its fraying strap and buckle, as it sank, mile by fathomless mile, through the ooze. Maybe that’s what Tollbury Marsh wanted in return for Clem. Sacrifice? She gave up the other sandal on the same day for good measure, tossing it into the water with an overarm throw, and a week later she left a hair ribbon fluttering under a stone. But there were only so many things she could offer up. Lorna hadn
’t been cross about the lost shoes – hadn’t paid much attention, in fact, to Virginia’s carefully contrived explanation – but it had still meant a trip to town, and expense.
She got as far as the dead seagull before her nerve ran out. It was exactly the same distance as she’d made four days ago – no more, no less – only the seagull had been plump and white on Tuesday morning and now it was stinking and crawling with flies.
Virginia crouched down as close as she dared, careful not to breathe through her nose. The gull was lying on the edge of a stagnant pool with its neck awry and its left wing splayed like a broken fan. Virginia thought about the Romans – they’d been doing the Romans at school this term – and the priests who studied birds as a way of interpreting the will of the gods. Augurs, they were called. She picked up a stick and gave the carcass a tentative poke. The flies rose, briefly. One of the gull’s wings flopped open at a wider angle and its body sank a little further into the mud.
Virginia walked back with her head down. By the time she’d noticed Mr Deering it was too late to pretend otherwise: he’d caught and held the sharp glance which she reserved, ever since Clem’s disappearance, for any man in a trilby hat. She toyed with the idea of avoiding him, but it was pointless. He was sitting on the wall by the steps, and that was the only way off the marsh between Salt Winds and Tollbury Point. Besides, she needed to fetch her coat.
He was sitting on it, though; using it as a cushion while he smoked his cigarette and squinted at the view. When he waved, her first instinct was to cover her chest with her arms; her second to pull the red dress as low over her knees as it would go. Her third instinct was to stop fidgeting and get the encounter over with.
‘You’re up early,’ he shouted when she was in earshot, but he wasn’t looking at her face in a conversational way. He was contemplating the dress. He stared at it very seriously, like an artist trying to get to grips with his subject matter, and as he stared he pulled fiercely on his cigarette. Virginia glanced left towards Salt Winds, knowing full well that they weren’t visible from the attic at this angle. Perhaps she should have brought Bracken with her. She might have done, if his waggings and snufflings had been compatible with her ritual.
Virginia fixed her gaze slightly to the left of Mr Deering’s face, on the slick curve of the car’s black bonnet.
‘Can I have my coat, please?’ she asked, holding out her hand as she climbed the steps. It came out like one, rapid, breathy word – canivmycoatpls – and she expected him to laugh at her, but he didn’t even smile.
‘My coat,’ she repeated. ‘Can I …?’
Mr Deering moved, but slowly, as if it was a gross inconvenience. He stubbed his cigarette out on the wall with a long sigh, uncrossed his legs and – eventually – shuffled sideways, like a man with old bones. He hadn’t teased her yet; there’d been no clammy handshake or How d’you do, Miss Wrathmell? She risked a quick glance at his face as she unfolded the coat. Maybe it was just the early-morning light, but she felt as if the usual shine was lacking. His moustache looked as though it was actually made of hair, rather than lacquer.
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he announced, sliding down from the wall as she pushed her arms into the sleeves. He didn’t ask what she’d been doing out on the marsh, or say how long he’d been watching.
‘Oh no, that’s all right,’ she mumbled. ‘Thanks all the same.’ Even he must realise it was a silly offer, given that the front door was two minutes’ walk away.
‘Just get in.’
He made it sound as if she’d been trying his patience for hours on end and he’d reached the end of his tether. The bones seemed to melt inside Virginia’s fingers, and she gave up trying to fasten her buttons. She couldn’t have opened the car door if she’d tried, so perhaps it was just as well he did it for her. She perched on the edge of the front seat and adjusted her coat so that she wouldn’t have to feel the leather against her bare calves.
Mr Deering threw himself into the driver’s side with a groan and felt inside his breast pocket for a fresh cigarette. After it was lit he let the match burn all the way down to his fingertips before tossing it out of the window. Virginia thought he was bound to switch the engine on after that, but he just leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes, the cigarette drooping from his lips. She looked down the lane towards Salt Winds, with its peeling walls and high windows. She could have been there by now, if she’d walked. She could have been there two or three times over.
Mr Deering was breathing so evenly he might have been asleep. Virginia glanced at the door handle. She knew the clunk it would make when she opened it and wasn’t sure she had the nerve. She swallowed noisily and made the calculations in her head. Two seconds to open it, another two to push herself forwards and leap into the lane …
Something landed on her leg, just above the knee. She looked down. Mr Deering’s fingers were moving up the softest part of her thigh as lightly as a spider’s legs, keeping time to a tune that only he could hear. Her eyes darted to his face. He was still leaning back in his seat, and his eyes, or eye (she could only see the left one) was closed, except for a razor-thin glint. The cigarette was burning up in his mouth and crumbling over his shirt front. She didn’t look down again, but she could picture his hand very clearly in her mind. It was covered in black hairs – except for the knuckles, which were white and bald, like insect larvae – and he was wearing a signet ring on his little finger. Every now and then she felt the metal brush against her warm skin.
‘It’s Lorna’s birthday next week,’ he remarked. She looked straight ahead and said nothing.
‘D’you know how old she’ll be?’
Virginia shook her head, imperceptibly.
‘Thirty.’ Mr Deering spat a shred of tobacco on to his thumb and flicked it out of the window. He stopped drumming his fingers and let them rest on her inner thigh, quite casually, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
‘I don’t know what she thinks she’s playing at, at her age. I presume she’s aware that any man with taste … well …’ He laughed sharply and his thumb traced a circle on Virginia’s skin. ‘Perhaps she thinks she’s immune to the ravages of time? I wonder. But don’t tell me she’s saving herself for Clem. Not her. Not after five months.’
Virginia shivered and managed to inch away, pulling her coat tight across her chest and legs. Mr Deering let go of her abruptly and discarded his half-smoked cigarette.
‘Tell her we’re going for a picnic today at Warren Sands,’ he said. ‘All four of us. Theo’s home for the long weekend, and he deserves a treat. Tell her I don’t care if she’s got a headache or a belly ache or whatever else it is; I’m coming with the car at ten. Wait!’
Virginia was opening the door, but Mr Deering reached over and closed it again. With both hands he prised her arms apart, and then her coat, and adjusted the rucked-up dress so that it covered the tops of her legs again.
‘Perhaps a change of outfit, in the meantime?’ He laid his hand on her knee and smiled. ‘We don’t want to frighten Theo. Do we?’
‘Virginia? That you?’
‘Yes.’
Lorna was leaning over the landing rail, on her way upstairs with the breakfast tray. Her hair was knotted inside a scruffy scarf and she was wearing Clem’s gardening shirt over her slacks – the shirt that still smelled of pipe tobacco and bonfires. It had been frayed, but clean, when Clem wore it last autumn, but now there were splashes of colour all over the sleeves and down the front.
Lorna leaned sideways and peered past Virginia’s head. ‘Just you?’
‘Yes.’
A quick heat washed over her, but Lorna couldn’t have seen Mr Deering, let alone the goings-on in his car. She wouldn’t have sounded so blithe if she’d had him in mind. She was just being cautious.
‘Could you bring the teapot up? I’ve got my hands full with this tray.’
Lorna carried on along the landing, and there was a rattle of plates and cups as she hooked the attic door open with her foot.
‘Virginia?’ She had to shout now to be heard. ‘Bring a plate and cup for yourself as well.’
The brown teapot was on the kitchen table, sunlit steam coiling from its spout. Virginia frowned at it while she buttoned up her coat. Then she grabbed it by the handle and followed Lorna upstairs.
Jozef was winding a new sheet of paper on to the Underwood as Virginia entered the attic, but he paused to look up at her and smile. Back in January, he’d asked if she’d mind him using Clem’s typewriter, and she’d said it was fine. After all, he might as well; it wasn’t sacred or anything. Clem used to call the Underwood ‘the infernal machine’ and preferred to write all his notes and first drafts by hand with a fountain pen. Virginia could see him now, hunched grumpily over his desk, jabbing at the keys with his index fingers. Jozef typed like a concert pianist, with his eyes on his handwritten notes, and when Virginia was in the right mood she enjoyed watching him at work. So there was no good reason to start minding now.
Lorna had set up two trestle tables in the attic – the kind that decorators use for wallpapering – and arranged them in an L-shape so that she and Jozef could confer, whilst keeping their work spaces separate. Jozef sat on a kitchen chair with a stack of paper, an ashtray, a pencil and the typewriter to hand. Lorna didn’t have a chair; she roamed the floor while she worked, or perched on the edge of the trestle amidst a chaos of rollers, rags, gouges, woodblocks and ink bottles. She’d slung a washing line across the room, from eave to eave, where she pegged out her finished and half-finished prints – the mermaids with seaweed hair, the walking trees, the flying ships, the canny-looking birds and animals.
The attic was a studio from dawn till dusk. Jozef’s living quarters – the old mattress, a rickety settee and a rocking chair – got pushed back against the wall while he and Lorna worked. The jam jar was still standing in the round window where Virginia had put it on New Year’s Eve, but she was forbidden to light the candle any more. A dead bluebottle lay on top of the hardened wax with its folded legs in the air.
Call of the Curlew Page 16