Call of the Curlew

by Elizabeth Brooks

  Virginia decides not to wave the Deerings off. It’s not as though anybody’s expecting it: Adriana keeps telling her to get indoors out of the wind, and he (Phil? Fred? Frank?) hasn’t made eye contact since that one halting exchange.

  She hobbles upstairs, thinking she’ll sit for a minute with the curlew’s skull; give them time to get going before she locks up the house for the final time and leaves. They’re so noisy though – even from her bedroom she can hear them slamming the boot, calling at one another through the wind, bleeping about with their phones – and they prevent her thoughts from sinking below the surface. In the end she picks up the curlew’s skull and crosses the landing to the spare bedroom.

  The black car is almost invisible in the darkness, but just as she reaches the window and looks down someone opens one of its doors, and a golden light floods the interior. Virginia is bowled over by the charm of it: the car looks like a magical box filled to the brim, and spilling over, with the sorcerous warmth of another world. Sophie climbs wearily into the back seat; Virginia hopes they’ll let her sleep on the way home and leave their questions till morning. Adriana pockets her phone, catches the keys from her husband and climbs into the driver’s seat. Mr Deering takes one last, furtive look at the house, but he doesn’t linger.

  The kindly light disappears when he shuts his door, and the occupants are lost from view, as if they’d never been. Sophie is safe, and the sheer relief of it seems to have hollowed the old woman out. She watches the car move off and disappear down the lane, and when it’s quite gone she brings the curlew’s skull level with her face. She hardly dares look it in the eye.

  ‘Bereft,’ she observes. ‘Bereft of our revenge.’

  In this light, with the spare room in darkness and the landing muted, the skull has adopted yet another new expression. Just the twist of an edge here, and the wrinkle of a shadow there, and Virginia could swear the bird has a sense of humour.

  New Year’s Eve, 1941

  EVEN THOUGH SHE’D raced till her lungs were raw, stopping only once to catch breath, Virginia didn’t rush to the attic the moment she got home. All the way along the lane she’d been firing imaginary questions at Jozef, but her anger seemed to dissipate as the front door swung to behind her – or at least it started to lose its fire, and turn into something colder and harder.

  She stood panting in the quiet hallway, her eyes and nose streaming. Her shoes were hurting – they’d been on the small side for a while now – so she kicked them off without bothering to undo the buckles. Perhaps this was what it felt like to come home and discover you’d been bombed? All the solid pieces of your life turned to charcoal; your treasures blasted to rubble; the hidden parts of your house ripped open and bared. Virginia turned round on the spot, and her breath hung in the air like smoke. To think she’d been stumbling round this place – this shell – for a whole year, without seeing it for what it was.

  Of course Lorna knew everything, she realised, as she went through to the kitchen and splashed her face at the sink. That hadn’t occurred to her until now, but as soon as it had, it was obvious. Lorna knew what Jozef was; she’d known all along, and encouraged Virginia’s idiotic belief in ‘Mr Rosenthal’.

  She cupped her hands under the cold tap and sucked water into her mouth, remembering how she’d felt in January, and the things she’d said: Oh, please can we keep him? … We don’t have to send him away, do we? … Clem likes Mr Rosenthal. The tap water tasted metallic, and when she spat it out the sides of the sink got spattered with red droplets.

  Bracken whined in his sleep and Virginia turned to look at him, pink water dripping from her chin. When she felt sad, she often knelt beside his basket and fondled his ears – not because he’d ever come round to liking her much, but because he was warm and alive, and his loyalties lay (she believed) with Clem. This afternoon she could hardly bear the sight of him. He looked more like a gargoyle than a dog, lying on his back like that, with his top lip hanging open and all his teeth exposed. The evil genius of Salt Winds, she thought, as she dried her face on a musty-smelling tea towel. It was the sort of notion that would have made her laugh, once.

  Virginia hugged herself and rubbed her upper arms, but there was no getting warm today. She glanced at the clock and thought back to the same time last year, when Lorna was helping out at the Women’s Institute and Clem had only been gone a few minutes, and Salt Winds was still its old, wholesome self. The range had been hot; the pantry stocked; the sitting-room fire laid. They’d been on the brink of atrophy, and they hadn’t had a clue. How had they not known? She ran her fingers like claws through her hair and screwed her eyes shut as she wandered back into the hall. How had she not known? Why hadn’t she stopped it all from happening?

  It wasn’t even two o’clock, but the hall had grown darker since she arrived. When she ran her thumb along the underside of the bannister, she felt the fluff gather like candyfloss on the soft pad of her skin. Her hand flopped to her side again and she didn’t bother to look at it or wipe it clean. Sightless, she stood at the bottom of the stairs. There seemed no point in going up. In going anywhere. In doing anything.

  It was the sound of the wireless that roused her – at least, she thought it was the wireless, though it wasn’t coming from the dining room. It was a zinging, crackling beat – barely audible – which wound itself around the moaning of the wind and the silence of the house, and refused to let her attention dissolve.

  The more she listened, the more it seemed to Virginia to resemble band music, with swooping trombones and dancing drums: the sort of stuff that used to make Clem mutter, with a trace of self-mockery, about how old he felt. They – Lorna and the German – must have taken the wireless up to the attic so that they could have it on while they worked. That’s what must have happened; that’s where it was coming from.

  Virginia followed the music up the stairs, like a thread through a maze, and up again to the attic. The music was distinct now, but not loud: she could hear their voices beneath it, and their stifled laughter. Despite her resentment, all of a sudden she felt shy, and she hesitated for a long time before nudging open the door and peering in through the gap.

  The gas fire was on high, its hisses and sputters undercutting the rise and fall of the big-band music, but the heat wasn’t radiating from there. Or not just from there, anyway. It seemed to pour out of everything: the walls and floorboards; the ochre trestle tables; the flattened Tate & Lyle box across the window; the velvety shadows in the rafters; the coloured prints that hung over the room and fluttered in mid-air like tongues of magic fire. Even their naked bodies seemed luminous with warmth, as if Jozef and Lorna were gods from Mount Olympus, and not ordinary people who suffered from chilblains, and didn’t get enough vitamins, and went round all day wrapped in itchy woollens.

  When Virginia saw them lying like that on the mattress, their bare arms and legs woven in a loose braid, her first instinct was to run, or at least to look away, but she didn’t. Her second instinct – the instinct to freeze – was stronger. Was this ‘it’, then? Was this Sex? Or the prelude, or the aftermath? Whatever it was, it was unbearable, it made her insides lurch – and at the same time she wanted, desperately, to watch.

  Lorna was lying across Jozef’s chest, and he was sitting with his head propped up on a pillow, tracing dreamy shapes down her side and over her bare breast. They’d just finished laughing about something, and the humour lingered on in the shape of their lips and the lines round their eyes.

  It wasn’t just their nakedness that shocked Virginia; it was the ease with which they shared it, as if their bodies were every bit as nice as clothes – nicer, even; more comfortable to move about in; pleasanter to the touch. There were plenty of blankets, but they were all messed up at the foot of the mattress and concealed very little from view. Lorna’s stomach. The odd knee or shin. Nothing that actually mattered.

  Virginia tried to imagine lying like that – being like that with someone – and the mere attempt was like being sc
alded from the inside. She wanted to follow her thoughts through, and at the same time she wanted them to stop, and while she was playing tug-of-war with herself, Jozef was bending his head and kissing Lorna on the lips. He did it with a strange thoroughness, as if there was a message in it, or an answer to something Lorna had said – though she hadn’t said anything – and not only did she let him do it, she twisted round and propped herself up on her elbows, so as to take the pressure of his mouth more fully, and return it with greater force.

  Virginia squeezed her thighs together tightly and wrapped her arms round her chest. There was an aggression in their kiss, a juicy melding and bruising of mouths, which was nothing like the way they did it in films – or indeed in Virginia’s cautious fantasies – where the actors’ lips always remained dry and intact, however passionate their intent. Lorna and Jozef were doing it wrong, and Virginia almost had the courage to burst in and tell them so. They were – what was it they were? She rummaged through the shadowy edgelands of her vocabulary, searching for a word to describe Lorna and Jozef, and what they were doing. The best she could come up with was ‘perverted’, but she wasn’t convinced it was right.

  It was very cold at the top of the stairs, and just as the attic’s warmth seemed to pour out of the music and the furniture and the lovers (perverts?) themselves, so the landing’s chill seemed to emanate from Virginia’s own body, as though her blood had turned to seawater, and her flesh to ice. She felt like one of those evil queens from fairy tales who walk in winter, and bring it with them everywhere they go. If she burst into the attic now, the gas fire would fizzle out and the lovely, rosy light would fade to grey. They’d stop laughing, too. Oh, they’d stop laughing all right, when they clapped eyes on her.

  Virginia squeezed her eyes shut, bowed her head and thought how much she hated them both. Yes, she did, she hated them. How could she not? Jozef was a Nazi and an adulterer and a liar and a pervert, and for all she knew he’d murdered Clem. Held him face down in the lapping waters and stripped him of his coat, his house and his wife. No doubt he’d told Lorna all about it. Maybe – probably – that’s why they were both laughing as Virginia came up the stairs. She curled her hands in on themselves and dug her nails into her palms. She did hate them; she could feel it now, like a creeping flame beneath her skin.

  ‘Let’s take a trip in a trailer,’ sang the impish voices on the wireless. ‘No need to come back at all …’

  ‘We never used to listen to this kind of music,’ Lorna remarked, sliding a cigarette between her lips. The attic was already grainy with smoke, and there were a handful of stubs in the ashtray. They must have been saving up their week’s supply for today, when they knew Virginia would be out of the way. No wonder she’d been forced, against her wishes, to go to Theo’s party. They’d had their own party planned. Their own orgy.

  ‘Clem wasn’t keen,’ Lorna added, by way of explanation. Jozef rolled on to his front and leaned over her, so that they were touching all the way along their bodies, from their feet to their chests. You couldn’t have got a cigarette paper between them, as Mrs Hill might have said if she’d been there – assuming the spectacle hadn’t rendered her utterly speechless.

  Lorna stroked her lover’s head, winding her fingers in and out of his curly hair. ‘Yes, we’re leavin’,’ she sang along with the band. ‘Oh we’re hittin’ the road, oh, we’re gettin’ away from it all.’ Her voice was soft and not quite in tune, and she managed to make the song sound sad, which it obviously wasn’t meant to be.

  Jozef touched her collarbone with his lips. ‘When we’re rich and famous …’ he began, moving his head down her breast bone and pausing every few words to deposit a kiss, ‘… and the war is over … and we’re far away from Tollbury Point … I shall buy you a gramophone … and we’ll fill our house with Tommy Dorsey records.’

  Lorna tried to smile. ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she murmured. ‘I thought we’d agreed …’

  Jozef lifted the blanket aside and kissed her on the navel. Lorna’s stomach looked rounder and harder than it used to, and it rose rather oddly from the rest of her body, like a hillock from a plain.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she repeated, as if Jozef was doing something unkind. He kissed her belly again, and she dug her fingers into his hair and stirred it restlessly, as if she couldn’t decide whether to push him off or force him to stay put.

  The song finished with a brassy clash, and in the moment between its ending and the BBC man speaking there was a loud bang from downstairs. Lorna and Jozef sat up and Virginia leapt backwards, before they could spot her.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. It sounded like the front door.’

  They flicked the wireless off, and for a few seconds there was nothing but the hiss of the gas fire, and the noise of everyone’s breathing.

  ‘Maybe it was just Bracken knocking something over …’ Lorna whispered.

  ‘Or Virginia?’

  ‘But she’s not due back for ages.’

  There was a flurry, as of clothes being reached for and disentangled, and a sudden hush as Mr Deering’s voice shouted up from the hall.

  ‘Lorna? Are you home?’

  One of them turned the gas off, and after that the stillness was complete. Even the wind seemed subdued, as though it had decided to stop fighting the silence and become a part of it instead. Virginia pressed her back against the wall and held her breath.

  Mr Deering waited for a long time, as if he was listening to the house. He opened a few doors, before climbing up the main stairs and pausing on the first-floor landing.

  ‘Virginia?’

  Once he’d decided Lorna was out, he stopped shouting and his voice began to drip honey.

  ‘Virginia?’

  When there was no response he began to plead, in a carrying whisper: ‘Vi? Where are you? We’re still friends, aren’t we?’

  He was coming very close to the foot of the attic stairs now. She could tell precisely where he was by the tell-tale whining of the floorboards under his shoes: he was passing along the landing and stopping outside her bedroom door. She could hear his breezy knock, and the creak of his knees as he got down to look under her bed, and the clang of hangers as he opened her wardrobe and pushed her clothes aside.

  There was a ruffling noise – ever so slight – from the mattress, and Lorna seemed to stifle a giggle. Virginia’s blood went hot and her thoughts lost all sense of order.

  Mr Deering might have come up to the attic of his own accord. Who knows? It might just have occurred to him. In the decades that followed, Virginia tried to believe it, but the fact always remained that she had shut the door behind her when she came up, and even if Mr Deering had thought to open it, a single glance up the poky stairwell would probably have persuaded him that there was nothing there but damp and darkness, and enough cobwebs to ruin his Savile Row suit. Why on earth – he’d have thought – would anyone be lurking about up there?

  In other words, if Virginia’s feet hadn’t taken it upon themselves to break the suspense, clomping down the stairs and kicking the attic door wide open so that it bounced twice against the wall, then Mr Deering might have given up his search and gone home. But Virginia’s feet (it was easier to blame them, and not entirely specious) did exactly that. She landed rather weakly off the last step, and waited for him to see her.

  He was still in her bedroom, with her pyjama jacket in his hands, but he poked his head round the door to see what the noise was.

  ‘Vi!’ He tossed the jacket on to the bed and came to meet her with his arms out.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he smiled, when she backed away. ‘You know I’m not cross with you?’

  Virginia shook her head. He didn’t seem able to see past her, to the gaping black doorway and the upward-pointing stairs.

  ‘There,’ she said, wriggling free of his hands and pointing at the open door. ‘Lorna’s up there … Go and see!’

  The words were out and immediately she wanted t
hem back. She made a tiny grasping motion with her fingers, but it was no use. They’d floated out of reach. They were gone.

  Max screwed up his eyes and peered up the stairwell. He was probably imagining a practical joke: the little devil was going to try to lock him in the attic or scare him with a pretend rat, and he was damned if he’d be fool enough to fall for it. Thank God he wasn’t going to fall for it. Virginia clapped her hands over her mouth, but not in time to suppress the relief that came bubbling up out of her throat. What was it – a sob? Or a laugh? Or a croak? Mr Deering’s frown deepened.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  Max ducked his head round the door and peered up the stairs.

  ‘Nothing! Please don’t go up.’

  She seized his arm as he set his foot on the first step, but he shook her off and carefully – oh, so carefully – began to climb. Virginia listened to the swish of his sleeve against the bare plaster, as he felt his way up the stairs and along the little landing and searched for the door handle. In her mind’s eye she saw herself dashing after him and pulling him back by the hem of his trousers, but in actual fact she didn’t move a muscle.

  Mr Deering went so quiet that Virginia thought by some miracle they’d made themselves scarce, and that he was merely weighing up the evidence of their artistic enterprise: the woodblocks, the typewritten sheets, the ink-stained rollers. But it wasn’t that; how could it be? It was just that he disliked himself when he lost his cool; he disliked seeming anything less than urbane. Virginia had only seen him lose his rag on one occasion, and he’d been drunk then.