Call of the Curlew

by Elizabeth Brooks

  There was just a single candle burning tonight. Jozef sat in front of the typewriter, but his arms were hanging down by his sides and he was looking across at the mattress. The candle had been placed in such a way that Lorna’s sleeping face shone brightly, leaving the rest of the attic a dusky jumble of blankets, table legs and discarded papers. She’d obviously been crying; there was a tell-tale puffiness round her nose and eyelids, and a sticky sheen on her cheeks. Jozef’s attention didn’t shift in Virginia’s direction until he heard her whispered greeting, and even then his eyes were slow to refocus.

  ‘I hoped you would come!’ he said belatedly, standing up and holding out his hands. ‘We missed you this evening. We always do, you know.’

  Virginia made no answer but picked her way across the cluttered floor and sat on the end of the mattress, her knees gathered up to her chin. Jozef always spoke so gently, as if he owed her a thousand unspecified apologies, and sometimes – in her darker moods – she felt inclined to fulfil his expectation. It was true, she was bitter. Not against him, of course – but he was the only person to allow the possibility, and even to expect it.

  ‘How’s your book?’ she asked, with a patent lack of interest. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, as usual, and baggy round his upper arms. All Clem’s clothes were too big for Jozef – even the braces had to be twisted up and knotted – and it ought to have made him ridiculous, only he was one of those people who’d look fine in sackcloth and ashes. It was a pity Lorna had burned his own things in the beginning, instead of washing and mending them. Somehow, Virginia didn’t like to picture Clem coming home and seeing his old clothes put to such elegant use.

  ‘The book is very well, thank you.’ Jozef had enough enthusiasm for two. ‘Very well indeed. We’re trying to think of a title for it; I think perhaps The Witch-Princess and Other Stories, but maybe this is too simple? I don’t know. What do you think?’

  He pushed the hair from his eyes and Virginia saw glints of gold where, in flat daylight, there were only browns. When he picked up a sheaf of typed sheets and shuffled them against the tabletop she sat very still and glared at the floor, a picture of indifference. He hesitated before laying the papers down again.

  ‘As for Lorna’s prints,’ he went on, nodding at the squares of paper pegged out beneath the rafters, ‘they are perfect.’ He pronounced the word ‘perfect’ as if it barely came close to his meaning and Virginia looked up, but Lorna’s pictures were almost invisible in the dark: abstract whirls of line and shadow curling in the draught.

  ‘But what will you do with it all when you’re finished?’ She hated herself for pricking and prodding, but she couldn’t seem to stop. ‘I mean, you can’t exactly march off to a publisher and say “I’m Herr Rosenthal and this is my book,” can you? And if Lorna does it – well. Her fiancé might have something to say.’

  She intended to shock, but Jozef just sighed and leaned back in his chair. Lorna stirred in her sleep and hunched deeper beneath the blankets.

  ‘Who knows?’ Jozef said. ‘Who knows. Maybe it will never be finished.’

  Virginia rubbed her screwed-up eyes against her knees. She was surprised by how much she wanted to cry, because she felt angry and not at all soppy. Anyway, she couldn’t give way to tears, so that was that. Lorna had got in first. One hysterical female flinging herself face down on Jozef’s mattress was bad enough; two would be verging on comedy. She looked up with a sniff and made her expression hard.

  Jozef sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head and contemplated her for a long time. The candle guttered, and waves of gold and black rippled across his face and arms, and the front of his shirt.

  ‘One day soon I will write a story just for you,’ he said. ‘“Virginia’s Tale”. I think about it a lot, actually.’

  She wiped her nose against her woolly knee. Jozef was staring right through her now, right through the attic wall, right into space, his eyes darting and narrowing, as if he glimpsed things there that troubled him.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she murmured.

  Jozef nodded abstractedly to show he’d heard, and pressed his lips together.

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  THE BAKED BEANS are sweet on her tongue, and hot all the way down to her stomach. Virginia only started eating because she needed the strength, but she’s enjoying herself now. Even the look of them – vivid orange on blue china – is good, verging on poignant. It’s a long time since she’s noticed colour. It’s a long time since she’s taken pleasure in food.

  Virginia leans in for another forkful and eyes her visitor. Sophie is arranging her beans in a zig-zag pattern across the plate and stroking the cat, but she’s not doing much eating. It’s funny how the Deeringness of the child doesn’t always leap at you straight away, even when you know it’s there. Sometimes you have to remember, and look for it. Those strong bones in her cheeks and nose, for instance, come via a different ancestral strand; Max’s nose was a button by comparison. Virginia smiles meagrely. A button nose. How he would have hated that.

  ‘Eat up,’ Virginia urges. ‘I thought you said you were hungry?’

  Silver is sneaking his front paws on to the table; he’ll be licking the plate next, if the girl doesn’t push him off. Poor little thing; she needs building up. Don’t they feed their children in Putney? Not that Virginia cares – at least not in that way. She’s just worried that the child will come over all faint with nothing inside her, and give up on the walk before they’ve even left the lane. They’ll have to go a fair way out before she can feel sure of victory. How long will it be, she wonders, before Sophie senses danger? How long before she demands to turn back?

  ‘Shoo! Greedy animal!’ Virginia flaps her sleeve at Silver and he retreats with poise. Sophie eats a single bean and glances at her watch.

  It’s started snowing again. It’s too dark to see anything through the indigo window – and anyway their reflections are in the way – but Virginia senses it all the same. There’s a prickly silence that comes with snowfall, and it’s more than just absence of sound. It’s heavy. If you put that silence on the kitchen scales, they’d tilt with a loud clang.

  Virginia tries to scrape up the last of the sauce with the edge of her fork. She’d run her tongue over the plate if she could, but she has her dignity, even today of all days, when worldly perspectives are meant to be falling away. The grimy saucepan is on the table between them, so she scours it with the wooden spoon and licks that instead. She thinks of all the meals she’s eaten alone in this kitchen over the years, but the memories merge into one, grey, glutinous lump. It never seemed to matter much, when or what she ate. Her senses were always racing ahead to the future; to this moment; to the last day of her life. She’s never had time or patience for the present.

  Sophie’s gaze keeps straying to the window, and she looks as if she wants to say something. Virginia sits up straighter and drops the wooden spoon into the empty saucepan. She needs to get in first, before the girl starts demurring about the walk, or asking to use the telephone, but her mind’s a blank. She buries her hands in her lap, taken aback by the tremors in her fingers. What on earth is she going to say about the phone? That it fell off the wall?

  ‘I was just wondering …’ Sophie’s fork pauses in mid-air. ‘Were you ever married?’

  Virginia frowns and blots her lips on a tissue.

  ‘I was married to my work,’ she answers primly, and immediately wishes that she’d just said no. Apart from anything else, it isn’t true. She was faithful to her work – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer: all that and more – but romance never came into it.

  ‘Oh.’ Sophie nods slowly. Now that she’s got something to ponder she begins to eat, albeit slowly, forking up the gloopy beans and pushing the toast to the edge of her plate. Virginia wonders whether to bother qualifying her answer, and decides against. If they must talk about the past, she’d rather talk about work than anything else.

  ‘But weren’t y
ou just a secretary or something?’ Sophie has the grace to go pink about the ears as soon as the words are out, and Virginia can’t bring herself to mind. It’s childish plain-speak, not cruelty.

  ‘I travelled the world,’ she retorts, dabbing at the corners of her mouth. ‘I was useful to the people who needed me …’ It’s meant to be a long list of justifications, but she struggles to think of anything else.

  ‘Oh, but …’ The pinkness spreads across Sophie’s cheeks. ‘… But you can’t just go around being useful all the time, and doing what other people want! I mean, what about you? Didn’t you want to – I don’t know – like, make your own mark on life?’

  The more excited Sophie gets, the faster she eats. Before you know it, her plate is almost empty, except for the soggy squares of toast she’s pushed to one side.

  Virginia stares coldly. ‘My life has been quite satisfactory, thank you very much.’ Typical Deering. Virginia tries to whip herself up into a rage, because it is typical Deering behaviour, this elbowing in on other people’s lives. This judging and censuring and reorganising. It is right, right, right that Sophie should suffer for the sins of her fathers. Virginia pictures her in the beam of a failing torch – wet, muddied and weeping – and refuses to flinch.

  Sophie glances up. ‘What? Oh no, no, I didn’t mean …’ She trails off. The fact is, she’d been addressing herself. The old woman on the other side of the table is of marginal interest; she has her own career in mind. Sophie is full of the future – full to overflowing – and it makes her eyes gleam and the rings on her fingers flash. Virginia lays her fists on the table and uncurls them with a sigh.

  ‘You sound like Lorna,’ she mutters, without expecting to be heard or understood. ‘She was always telling me to spread my wings.’

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ Sophie is suddenly gleeful, and she reaches out to press the old woman’s hand. ‘That’s it! We have to spread our wings!’

  Oh, we will, Virginia thinks, flinching under the girl’s cold touch. She glances through the window at the tumbling darkness, and wonders whether to explain that up until now her life has been all about waiting; about filling in the time as best she can. She decides not to. Sophie won’t understand. She’ll just say, How d’you mean? Waiting for what? And anyway, they shouldn’t be sitting about chatting. They should be getting ready to go.

  The cat yowls as Sophie slides him off her lap and stands up. Virginia tenses, wondering what she’s after now, worrying about the mangled telephone – but it’s all right. She’s just gathering up the plates. Good.

  ‘Pass me that notepad on top of the microwave, would you? And a biro. There should be a couple lying around. Thank you.’

  Sophie does as she’s told and Virginia begins to write on the first page: Torch, stones, manuscript. This is better. This is more like action. Sophie drops the dirty cutlery into the sink and opens cupboards in search of washing-up liquid. She doesn’t ask for directions, she just acts. When she finds there’s no hot water in the tap, she boils up the kettle.

  Virginia finishes her list and smoothes a shaky hand over a fresh page. She’s always known she’ll have to leave a note for Joe. You can’t end a life – not even a life like hers – without tying up the odd loose end.

  Salt Winds

  31.12.15

  Dearest Joe,

  It’s a confident start, but that’s because it’s been years in the planning. This is her one and only chance to tell him, in so many words, that she loves him, and if he’s embarrassed … well. Too bad. At least she won’t be there to see his face. Only – what comes next, after Dearest Joe? Virginia racks her brains. So many nights she’s written and rewritten this note in her head, and now she can’t remember how it goes.

  When she looks up the sink is brimming with suds and Sophie is taking off her jacket. Virginia can see the pinkish glow of the girl’s back through the white gauze shirt. She shivers inside her dressing gown as Sophie rolls up her sleeves.

  Dearest Joe, my own little brother,

  The saucepan slips out of Sophie’s hands, into the sink, with a slosh. Virginia looks up again. Perhaps she should tell Joe that she’s not gone on her own. She doesn’t want to tell him because he won’t understand, but it feels wrong to make no mention at all. It reduces her own farewell to half a story.

  Virginia forces her eyes back to the paper. Sometimes, when she’s writing this note in her mind, she moves herself to tears. She’s not moved now. It reads like a spoof.

  Dearest Joe, my own darling little brother, I have decided to leave this world for good, but before I do I wish

  I wish to assure you

  I wish to tell you how much

  I want you to know

  Of course, the girl’s disappearance will be all over the news. Virginia rests her chin on her thumb and resists the temptation to look up again. How long will it take them – the police, the press, the Deering family – to link Sophie with Tollbury Marsh? Perhaps they never will. Why should they? Virginia nibbles her thumbnail and reads what she’s put so far. She screws it up, stuffs it in her pocket and starts again.

  Joe – the cat will need feeding now I’m gone. Take him home with you, if it’s easier. There’s a new bag of Go-Cat by the front door and a box of pouches. He prefers the fish-flavour ones, as you know, though I like to ring the changes occasionally! Very best wishes, Virginia.

  She folds it hastily, not bothering to line the edges up, and scrawls JOE across the top. She places it in the middle of the table, where he’ll spot it straight away, and weighs it down with one of the stones she pocketed last night. Good. That’s one job done. What next? She glances at her list.

  ‘Sophie?’ It’s the first time she’s addressed the girl by name, and she falters self-consciously so that the syllables fail to link as fluently as they should. ‘When you’ve finished, would you go to the cupboard under the stairs and find yourself a coat? There should be some wellies there too.’ They’ll never make any progress if the child isn’t kitted out properly to begin with.

  The plug gurgles as Sophie squeezes the dishcloth and spreads it over the side of the sink. She crosses the room, light in her ballet slippers, skipping over the stick that’s leaning at an awkward angle against the table.

  ‘Yes, sure.’ She stops at the door, and there’s something conciliatory about the way she holds up her hands. ‘I will. But first I’m going to give my mum a quick ring.’ She doesn’t add if that’s OK, or if you don’t mind.

  Just wait a moment – that’s all Virginia intends to say, but she can’t seem to get further than ‘J … Jus … Just …’ When she tries to get up, her stick clatters to the floor. The chair is too far under the table and her frantic feet can’t get any purchase on the floor. It’s like being trapped inside a drawer.

  ‘Oh no, don’t get up!’ Sophie makes that gesture with her palms again, as if gently commanding a dog to sit. ‘I know where the phone is; I saw it on the landing. I’ll be two seconds.’

  There’s nothing for it. Virginia has to sit back and listen as Sophie shuts the kitchen door and fumbles for the light switch in the hall.

  August 1941

  VIRGINIA WAS CURLED up beside the attic window with her book, so she caught the faint crackle and bang from the lane, though she didn’t pay it any attention. It couldn’t be – for instance – the sound of rolling tyres and the slamming of a car door, because who drove down to Salt Winds these days? Mr Deering did, but rarely at this hour of the morning and besides, he was supposed to be in London till Friday.

  Bracken was asleep on his side, basking in a slice of hot sunlight, and he didn’t seem worried either. He twitched in response to the bang, as if a fly had landed on his ear, but he didn’t open his eyes. Neither Lorna nor Jozef heard a thing; they were too busy whispering and smoking.

  Virginia turned the page, though she wasn’t really reading. Clem had given her this book a year ago today; his hands had touched these covers and riffled these very pages. Clem and Lorna had given i
t, she should say, though the idea was surely his. There’d been a whole set of hardbacks with sprightly pictures on their dust jackets: Little Women (the one she was reading now), Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Five Children and It and The Jungle Book. And after she’d unwrapped them they’d had tea – as grand a birthday tea as Mrs Hill could muster – with shortbread and Welsh cakes, and the periwinkle crockery.

  If there was a sound from inside the house a couple of minutes later, Lorna’s laugh masked it pretty well, though Bracken raised his head. Virginia saw the hairs bristling on his neck and remembered that the front and back doors had been propped open to create a draught.

  And then that silky voice, right at the foot of the attic stairs, calling upwards and silencing their chatter.

  ‘Hello?’

  Everybody froze, lips parted in mid-speech.

  ‘Anybody home?’

  Lorna turned her back on Jozef and spread her arms, as if to hide him from view. Then she cleared her throat, tried on a smile and shouted, ‘Max! I’m coming! One moment!’ Nobody moved and there was no reply from downstairs. Lorna locked eyes with Virginia and motioned her towards the door.

  Yellow spots drifted across Virginia’s vision as she felt her way down the stairs and on to the dark landing. She couldn’t make Mr Deering out, until he moved across her open bedroom door and became a silhouette against an oblong of pink. She could see her unmade bed over his shoulder, with the pillows plump against the headboard and the sheets all tangled.