Call of the Curlew

by Elizabeth Brooks

  Virginia put the teapot down on Jozef’s table, since there was no room on Lorna’s, and sat on the edge of the rocking chair with her feet flat on the ground. She hunched her back and shivered, despite the sunshine, and tried to pull her coat closer, especially where it parted at the collar and the knee.

  The grown-ups ate hungrily but distractedly, absorbed by their work. Jozef poured the tea because Lorna’s hands were covered in printer’s ink; even her wedding ring was black. Virginia stared at them as if they were characters in a film, whose lives she could watch, and wonder about, but never enter into. At one point Jozef said, out of the blue, ‘You are sure, then, about the story of the talking fish?’ and Lorna replied, ‘Hmm,’ and he said, ‘Perhaps we have to think about this again?’

  Lorna never seemed to know when Virginia was watching her, but Jozef did. When he’d finished his breakfast he came and sat on the mattress so that they were face to face, she staring down from the rocking chair and he smiling up.

  ‘It’s good you have come upstairs,’ he said. ‘We’ve just finished another story, so—’

  ‘Nearly finished,’ Lorna interrupted. She was peering at an inky woodblock and picking a splinter from one of the grooves with her fingernail. ‘Hang on. I just have to do this, and then I’ve one more layer, and then I’m done.’

  ‘All right, ja,’ Jozef corrected himself. ‘We have nearly finished. So we are needing the expert eye of our chief critic. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Mmm?’ Lorna looked up blankly and caught Jozef’s eye. ‘Oh yes,’ she agreed, in a show of enthusiasm. ‘Indeed we do! In fact, Virginia, why don’t you read it now? And I’ll show you the illustrations afterwards, just as soon as I get this … sorted out. Oh bother.’ She broke off for a gulp of tea, leaving black fingerprints on the mug handle. There were smudges on her forehead as well, where she’d pushed the hair away from her eyes and tried to tuck it under the scarf.

  Jozef stood up to fetch the papers. Virginia said, ‘I met Mr Deering in the lane just now.’

  When the light drained from Lorna’s face, Virginia experienced a split-second of pleasure. She looked away towards the marsh, although the sun was dazzling and she couldn’t see a thing.

  ‘He wants to drive us out to Warren Sands for a picnic. He said to be ready by ten.’

  She felt as though she’d dragged Lorna back from make-believe; back on to the real-life side of the cinema screen where the audience sat. Jozef was left alone behind the glass, spouting lines from a script.

  ‘Why don’t you tell him no?’ he kept saying. ‘Why do you have to go if you don’t want to? He can’t force you.’

  Lorna didn’t reply, except by shaking her head slowly and wiping her hands on a rag, finger by inky finger.

  Theodore had brought his camera. He sat next to Virginia in the back seat of the Austin 12 and clicked the lens cap off and on with an expert frown. When she failed to show any interest he started yakking on about shutter speeds and daylight-loading cassettes. Virginia closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the bumping window. She felt sick.

  The conversation in the front of the car was similarly one-sided.

  ‘Do you miss me when I’m in London? Lorna?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘What about these headaches you keep having, every time I happen to call round?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘All right now?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Lorna was wearing a grey skirt and jacket, with pearls and gloves and a hat, but she seemed fidgety, as if those smart clothes no longer fitted as well as they used to. She kept twisting her skirt at the waist and scratching her wrists. Virginia wondered how clean her fingers were now. She’d scrubbed at them for ages, standing over the basin in her slip with one eye on the clock, but printing ink was difficult to shift.

  Theodore put the camera back in its case and hung it round his neck.

  ‘So what did you bring for the picnic?’ he demanded.

  ‘What?’ Virginia couldn’t pretend an interest in the view because there wasn’t one, but she didn’t bother to turn and face him. The car was rolling between tall hedgerows and all she could see were straggly hawthorn twigs and the shrinking white circle of her own breath on the glass. She kept picturing the red dress, ripped up and bundled in the kitchen range. It’d given off a funny smell when she put a match to it.

  ‘I thought your mother might have put something towards the picnic, that’s all. My father got Cook to pack shrimps and boiled eggs and things like that; the hamper’s in the boot. There’s champagne for them, as well. You and me have got ginger beer.’

  Champagne? Virginia frowned, but she made herself stay put, lolling indifferently, with the glass cold against the tip of her nose.

  ‘He didn’t say to bring anything.’

  Theo huffed derisively and folded his arms across his chest. She watched his reflection flicker through a blur of leaves and cow parsley.

  ‘The WI met at Thorney Grange the other night,’ Mr Deering was saying. ‘The village hall was double-booked, so I offered them the use of my drawing room.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lorna plucked at the creases in her sleeves. That jacket had been stuck at the back of the wardrobe for months on end and there hadn’t been time to iron it. All Lorna’s smartest clothes seemed to be in need of washing or mending; as of this morning they formed a panicky heap on the floor of her bedroom. The grey outfit had been the best of a bad lot.

  ‘I got chatting to some of the ladies after they’d finished.’ Max laughed lightly and glanced at his moustache in the rear-view mirror. He’d done something to it since Virginia saw him on the lane; it was all slick and straight again. ‘I gather you’ve said no to taking in an evacuee?’

  Lorna crossed her arms with a shrug, but Mr Deering was content to wait for an answer and he had a way of making silences ache. After a while she said, quietly, ‘I’ve got Virginia to think of. Just because Salt Winds is large, that’s not everything. Clem didn’t exactly leave us well off.’

  Max read – or pretended to read – intimacy in her soft tone. He took his left hand (tan and polished now, in a driving glove) off the steering wheel and squeezed her fingers hard. If she flinched at all, she recalled herself quickly, and when he carried her hand to his lips she didn’t resist.

  ‘Well, you know what the answer to that is,’ he whispered. He didn’t exactly kiss Lorna’s cotton gloves; rather he ran them over his lips and gently nibbled them, and when he caught Virginia’s eye in the mirror he smiled.

  He parked the car in a sheltered spot beside the road and they straggled over the dunes to the beach, laden with rugs and baskets. The easterly wind was picking up, and when they emerged in sight of the sea it flew at them, throwing sand and sunlight in their eyes. The tide was way out, and acres of hard, wet shore glinted between them and the first line of breakers. The only other person in sight was a dog-walker, who marched briskly with her hands in her pockets and her collar turned up, and threw stones for her collie. Bracken would have been in his element, but Mr Deering wouldn’t allow animals in his car.

  Virginia’s shoes were packed tight with sand by now, but she intended to keep them on. Thank goodness it wasn’t picnic weather and she didn’t look out of place in her woollen stockings and calf-length skirt. Theo was wearing shorts and his legs were already pimpling with cold.

  They spread a tartan rug among the dunes and weighed it down with stones and Theo’s cricket stumps. Virginia couldn’t catch a ball and wasn’t sure how to hold a cricket bat, and she foresaw an interminable afternoon. The grown-ups would tell them to run off and play, and Mr Deering would watch from the picnic rug, laughing into his champagne while she sweated and swiped at thin air. Her stomach felt strangely heavy, as if she’d swallowed lead. She couldn’t even look forward to lunch, and how often did she get the chance to eat potted shrimps and ginger beer? Especially nowadays, with Mrs Hill gone and Lorna no ace with the rations.

  ‘You children
keep an eye on things,’ Mr Deering said, pulling Lorna’s arm through his. She was shivering inside her thin jacket and trying to pretend she wasn’t. ‘We’re going for a walk. No pilfering the sandwiches while we’re gone.’ Lorna shot a quick glance back over her shoulder, and then she was led away through the soft foothills, her arm squashed into his side.

  Virginia huddled on the edge of the rug and watched the collie chasing through the distant waves and pouncing on another stone. What was the meaning of Lorna’s glance just now? Supplication? Apology? Collusion? Virginia wasn’t sure, but she felt she ought to know. She laid her cheek on her knees and looked left to see if the pair were still visible, but they’d disappeared, their shapeless footprints indistinguishable from all the other dips and dimples in the sand. Virginia kept staring at the emptiness, wanting Lorna to be all right.

  Theo was trying to make a heap of sand, but it was too soft for castle-building and the sides kept collapsing in thin streams. He stamped his efforts out and stood in the ruins with his hands in his pockets, squinting out to sea.

  ‘So, we’re going to be brother and sister,’ he remarked, his mouth puckering round the words as if they tasted bad. ‘What d’you make of that?’ When she didn’t answer straight away, he turned to look at her, his right foot kicking at the loose sand. He had the advantage over her – standing so tall with the sun behind his head.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘They’re going to get married, aren’t they.’ Theo nodded towards the dunes. It wasn’t a question.

  Virginia dug her fingers down in search of warmth, but it was dank and cold beneath the sand.

  ‘They are not!’ she snorted. ‘Anyway, Lorna couldn’t, even if she wanted to. She’s still married to Clem.’

  Theo jingled the coins in his pocket and smiled at the horizon, like a man of the world.

  ‘She’ll marry him all right,’ he said with certainty. ‘My father says she needs him more than he needs her. He says she can’t support herself – let alone the two of you – on the pittance Wrathmell left behind.’

  My father says. Virginia clutched fistfuls of sand and glared straight ahead. Theo began pacing up and down the length of the rug and his legs kept flashing past her eyes: his white, skinny, goosebumped, little boy’s legs.

  ‘I don’t care what your father says.’ The tremor in Virginia’s voice was an effect of the easterly wind; she hoped Theo realised that. ‘Lorna will never say yes to him. She’ll never say yes to anyone. Ever. How can she?’

  They watched the collie gallop out of the sea and shake itself, shedding water like sparks of light. Its owner called and it streaked to her side, a flash of black and white. Theo continued to smile his private smile.

  ‘She will, you know,’ he said. ‘She owes him.’

  ‘Owes him? How—’

  ‘And anyway, you can tell she’ll say yes by the way she looks at him.’

  Virginia raised her eyebrows as if this was too, too funny. ‘You think my mother is spoony about your father? Really?’

  Theo shook his head with a humourless laugh. Despite his shorts and skinny legs and his being four months her junior, he had an unmistakable authority about him, as if he knew things she couldn’t hope to understand.

  ‘Not that she is actually your mother,’ he said. ‘And anyway, that wasn’t what I meant.’

  All along the dunes, the marram grass bent and rustled in the wind. It sounded like someone screwing up bits of paper, and put her in mind of Jozef and the typewriter.

  ‘Darling? Show the children.’

  That was the first thing Mr Deering said when he brought Lorna back to the rug. She’d lost her hat and several pins, and her hair was gritty with sand. Virginia waited for ‘the look’ that Theo claimed to have observed, but Lorna’s eyes were blank, like blacked-out windows, and Virginia couldn’t read anything there at all.

  ‘Darling?’ Mr Deering didn’t like having to repeat himself.

  Lorna opened her fist and the children peered, obligingly, into her black glove. It was a ring; a gold band crusty with emeralds and diamonds. Theo said, ‘Why aren’t you wearing it?’

  ‘Oh, well I haven’t actually—’ Lorna began. ‘At any rate, not till Clem’s been gone a year. At least a year …’ Max caught her eye and she stopped.

  ‘It’s a bit small,’ he explained to the children, closing Lorna’s fingers over the ring. ‘But we can have it altered.’

  Theo tugged the camera from its case, on a sudden impulse, and squinted at them through the viewfinder. He lowered it again to uncap the lens and twiddle a dial.

  ‘Good idea, Theo,’ said his father. ‘Come on, girls.’

  He drew them to his side and put his arms around their waists: a game hunter posing with his trophies. His grip was so tight that they lost their balance and fell against him as if fond, or giddy, or both. Virginia fought for a foothold in the slack sand.

  ‘Come on, Virginia!’ Theo shouted. ‘Smile!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Deering urged through his teeth. ‘Smile.’ His nails jabbed at her sweater, pressing into her flesh, grating against her ribcage. She tightened her jaw and stared at the thin clouds above Theo’s head. They could do as they liked, but they weren’t going to squeeze a smile from her. She wanted Mr Deering to look at the developed photograph and feel uneasy. She wanted him to wonder what had been going through her mind as the shutter clicked.

  It was only half past eleven. Theodore said he was hungry but his father told him it was too early for lunch, and he’d have to make do with a taste of Moët et Chandon instead.

  ‘What’s that?’ Theo asked suspiciously.

  ‘Champagne, of course,’ said his father. ‘It’s not every day a man gets himself engaged.’

  There may have been champagne and photographs, but it didn’t feel like a celebration. Nobody said anything nice; there was no laughter or congratulations. Even when the cork popped and Mr Deering said ‘Jolly good show!’ he said it satirically, to himself. Virginia swirled the sand with her toe and when he distributed the glasses she accepted her juvenile portion without a thrill.

  Mr Deering didn’t announce a toast, but he touched Virginia’s glass with his own when the others weren’t looking, and winked.

  ‘Pity it’s gone a bit warm,’ he said aloud after his first sip. ‘It was nicely chilled when I packed it.’

  It tasted cold to Virginia. Cold as the wind off the sea, and sour.

  It was four o’clock by the time they got home. Mr Deering drove all the way down the lane to Salt Winds, but wouldn’t come in for tea. He said he was sorry to part from them so early, but he had to take a telephone call at half past. He’d come up tomorrow morning and drive them into town. Wouldn’t it be nice to go to the cathedral together for Communion?

  Virginia and Lorna stood side by side on the doorstep and watched the car glide away towards Tollbury Point. Once it had disappeared from view and the engine noise had faded, they remained a few minutes more, listening to the wary silence. When Lorna finally turned to unlock the front door, it felt as though she was doing something risky; as though she was unlocking a secret.

  Lorna tossed her gloves on to the hall table. She’d succeeded in scrubbing the ink off earlier, but all the same Mr Deering must have wondered about her skin when he was trying to jam that engagement ring on to her finger. It looked so tough and red these days, and she kept the nails so short and square. They were no longer the hands of the lovely Mrs Wrathmell; they were a working woman’s hands.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Lorna murmured, with her back to Virginia. She rubbed her eyes wearily and half turned her head. ‘You want to know why I didn’t refuse him? Don’t you?’

  Virginia shook her head slowly. If she didn’t say anything it was because she could hardly admit she was remembering the feel of Mr Deering’s fingers on the inside of her thigh, and how she’d sat so still, and how afraid she’d been at the time of saying, or doing, the wrong thing.

/>   The minute she’d changed out of her grey clothes Lorna ran up to the attic. Virginia followed as far as the first-floor landing before changing her mind. She stood at the closed door for a minute, listening to the floorboards creaking beneath their feet and their conversation coming muffled through the ceiling, and felt a sort of pity for the rest of the house, which used to be so full of firelight and tobacco smoke and BBC voices.

  Through the long summer twilight she loitered in the downstairs rooms, poking about in drawers and cupboards where she had no business, and munching on a wrinkled apple that had kept its sweetness through the winter, on the wooden fruit rack under the stairs. The photographs on the dining-room mantelpiece held her attention for a while. She nibbled round the pips as she stood tiptoe on the hearth and studied the pictures of Lorna: Lorna in the garden, Lorna on a windy pier, Lorna as a wan bride. It was funny how you could hate and love the same person according to whom they were with, and what they were doing, and even where they were. Virginia tossed the remains for Bracken and he settled down with his paws outstretched, leaning on the skinny core with the side of his mouth as he chewed. There was something about Lorna-in-the-attic that made her angry, though she couldn’t say why.

  She went upstairs and joined them, all the same. It felt like failure, but she needed the company: once Bracken had settled in his basket and night had fallen, life tended to flicker out altogether in the downstairs rooms. Salt Winds was an abandoned house, not a home, and Virginia couldn’t redeem it all by herself. She’d had enough of the dust on the table where they used to eat their meals, and the dirty plates gathering in the kitchen sink, and the post (some of it still addressed to C. G. J. Wrathmell Esq.) lying unopened in the hall. At least there’d be light in the attic, and someone to say hello to, even if she could only belong with them fleetingly: an émigrée from below.

  There was no electric wiring in the attic, but when Jozef and Lorna were working on their fairy-tale book at night (which they did without fail, unless Mr Deering was expected) the place dazzled, with lanterns hanging from the rafters and candlewax drooling down the sides of bottles. The two of them had flattened out a cardboard box, which they tacked over the window frame in lieu of a blackout curtain. Virginia’s defunct candle-in-a-jam-jar made the cardboard bulge outwards, very slightly, and she wondered why no-one had bothered to throw it away.