None of them was sitting at the dining table now, though they obviously had been, because she could see the whisky decanter, the silver tray, and a muddle of wet circles where their glasses had stood. She pushed the door and went a little farther in, and saw broken glass on the floor near the fireplace: thousands of tiny shards that glittered like diamonds in the lamplight.
“Mind those pretty feet.”
Mr. Deering was in here, all alone, and it was too late to flee. She hadn’t spotted him in the high-backed armchair because he’d blended so well with the shadows—all of him except his hands, which were spot-lit by the lamp. His signet ring winked as he raised an empty tumbler to his mouth, tilting it right back and probing with his tongue in search of a last drop.
“Ugh.” He glared into the bottom of the glass, a drop of moisture hanging off his lower lip. All his well-groomed elegance had melted away, and his whole face looked wet and swollen. Virginia hoped it was just the heat and alcohol making him sweat, because the thought of Mr. Deering in tears made her squirm. She thought he was going to ask for the decanter, which was still a third full of whisky, but when he looked up he was frowning as if something perplexed him; as if he’d forgotten what exactly he wanted. His bloodshot gaze landed on her and wandered over her body in frank appraisal, like he was making calculations; totting up a price. When he hovered over the area of her navel, she thought one of her pajama buttons must have come undone, and she moved her hand to cover the gap.
“Come and sit on my knee,” he mumbled, rubbing his thighs with his free hand, as if to smooth a seat for her. His words kept running into one another, and his head wobbled from side to side as if it had come loose from his neck and needed fixing with a screwdriver.
Virginia swallowed. The fingers of Mr. Deering’s other hand kept tightening and untightening around the empty glass, as if he were trying to pump it for more spirits. If he gripped any harder, it would implode in his fist, and there’d be more broken glass on the floor. She crossed her hands over her stomach as if she had an ache, and tried to think of something ordinary to say. She ought, probably, to make some sympathetic remark about Juliet, but she didn’t dare.
She fixed her eyes on the green lampshade, slightly to the left of his head. “Don’t break it,” she said in the end, her tone wavering between resolve and apology.
“Oh?” Mr. Deering held the glass aloft, as if he was about to administer the final squeeze. “Why’s that? Is it one of Daddy’s heirlooms?”
“I just meant you might cut yourself.”
“Aaah,” he cooed, swaying forward in his chair.
He began drawing circles on his lap again. “Come on, don’t be mean. I’ll make you comfy on my knee.”
When Virginia shook her head, Mr. Deering lurched to his feet. She thought he was coming after her—perhaps he was—but the whisky decanter diverted his attention. He staggered against the table, catching at the back of a chair to stop himself from falling.
“We should drink a toast,” he mumbled, as he began to pour. “I propose a toast.”
His hand wavered back and forth over the glass, and the amber liquid pooled on the tabletop.
“To lovely little girls,” he said, lifting the half-filled glass to his mouth and draining it in one go. He wiped his moustache on his sleeve, belching softly, and Virginia ran away.
Footsteps in the hall made her think she was being followed. Animal-like, she turned and crouched on the top stair, but it was Lorna, coming out of the kitchen with a steaming mug in one hand and a dustpan in the other.
“Bracken?” she cajoled, without noticing Virginia behind the banisters. “Bracken! Come with me. Come on, good boy.” The dog obeyed reluctantly, creeping from the kitchen and sniffing near her ankles for a treat. “That’s it,” Lorna whispered, squaring her shoulders and pushing the dining-room door wide open.
“Well! What a mess!” Her voice was bright all of a sudden. “Not to worry. You sit down, Max, and drink this tea while it’s hot. I’ll tidy a bit.”
Virginia heard one of the big dining chairs toppling and heavy shoes crunching through the crystal shards. A hollow knocking began to interfere with the music: Mr. Deering was doing something to Clem’s wireless. Bracken began one of his deep, sustained growls as Mr. Deering’s speech grew louder and more shapeless.
“It’s nice, this German music,” he slurred. “Isn’t it nice? Beethoven, or something. Brahms. One of those Jerry composers, anyway. Very civilized. Don’t you think it’s most awfully civilized, Lorna?”
A swift click, and the music stopped.
“Lorna! Don’t switch it off, just like that. You heard me say I was enjoying it! Don’t I deserve a bit of pleasure this evening?”
After that he started saying “Lorna” over and over again, and his voice became muffled, as if he were talking with his mouth full of food. Virginia pictured him eating Lorna up bit by bit, stuffing his cheeks with her flesh and hair.
“Max, please, please.” Lorna’s voice was desperate; the genteel hostess had cut and run. “Don’t. Please get off me. Please, just sit down.”
Virginia wondered where Clem had got to, and wished to goodness he would come.
When she got back to her room she sat down on the floor with her back against the bed. Something was bumping and jangling across the garden, like an unwieldy bicycle, and she could hear the rumble of a man’s voice below her open window. It was Clem. So that was where he was.
“Oh goodness, the shears!” His words floated upward with the smoke from his pipe, and Virginia raised her head to listen. “I’d quite forgotten. Thanks, Rosenthal, you must let me know what I owe you.” But before Mr. Rosenthal could reply there was the bang of a door bursting open, and Mr. Deering’s voice flooded the twilit garden.
“What’s this then?” he slurred. “What’s going on here?”
He must have given Mr. Rosenthal’s trike an almighty kick, because there was a ringing, grinding crash and the wheels ticked wildly, around and around, like the hands of a crazy clock. Then there were grunts and screams and thuds and shouts of “Max! Max!” and a pattering noise, like bits of stone spraying off the wall, and a voice that kept calling on God, only the sound it made was Gott, Gott!
The sudden quiet was worse. She had time to picture Clem bleeding his life out on the grass and to wonder what on earth she was supposed to do, when Mr. Deering broke the silence.
“Quite the enemy sympathizer, aren’t we, Clement?” he gasped, breathing hard. “With your Jerry music and your fucking Jerry friend?”
“Max, old man.” Clem spoke gently, as if cajoling a small child. “Let him alone, now. Come on. Let him alone.” Mr. Deering’s obscenities rose above all the other noises, flowing like hot breath into Virginia’s ear—bloody hun, bastard, fucking bastard—on and on and on in a rhythmic chant. Lorna’s pleas glided in and out of the din, until finally there was something like a pause, and the clatter of the tricycle being righted, and a series of gasping whispers that Virginia couldn’t make out.
Virginia counted to twenty before crawling, cautiously, to the window. Mr. Rosenthal and Lorna had gone, but Mr. Deering was pounding his fists against the earth as if there were still someone there to punish. It couldn’t have been very satisfying because his flow of swear words began to dwindle, and eventually they stopped altogether and he just huddled there on his hands and knees with his head hanging low. His shoulders began to convulse, and at first Virginia thought he was crying, but then she realized he was being sick into the grass.
When he’d finished, he crawled to a clean patch of earth and lay down with his head on his arms. Clem sat nearby, like a watchman, with his back against the knobbly flint stones and his pipe—extinguished during the fight—dangling from the corner of his mouth. He had dark stains on his sleeves and all down the front of his shirt.
“Is Mr. Rosenthal all right?” Virginia asked from the kitchen doorway.
She thought she’d find him in here—she’d pictured him lyin
g on the table, half dead in a pool of blood, and had entered warily, ready to fling her hands over her eyes—but there was only Lorna, sitting with her sewing basket and a pile of mending. She’d just picked Virginia’s gray pinafore dress off the top of the pile: the hem needed a stitch before school began on Monday morning.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” Lorna snapped, but before Virginia could reply she was shaking her head and answering, more patiently, “I don’t know. I think he is. He wouldn’t stay.”
“Where did he go?”
Lorna tried to thread a needle with a length of black cotton, but her fingers were unsteady. When she caught Virginia watching she gave up and lowered the gray pinafore onto her lap.
“I don’t know, he just went. His face was bleeding, and I don’t know ... I think it was mostly his lip, but I’m not really sure. He wouldn’t let me see. He kept saying ‘It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s all right,’ but he sounded so upset. Oh Christ.”
Lorna dropped the sewing and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Virginia sat down carefully and traced her fingers over a whorl in the wood while she wondered what to say. The old tabletop rolled between them like a parchment map, grainy with longitude lines and knotty islands and uncharted territories. Sometimes she felt she hated Lorna, but other times she felt a funny kind of concern for her, a protectiveness, as if she herself were the real grown-up and Lorna were a little girl.
“It’s not your fault,” Virginia ventured, at last.
“Clem will say it is. Max was drunk when he arrived, and what did I do but bring out the whisky? I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking ...”
Lorna ran her palms over her face, as if rinsing it with water. She must have touched Mr. Rosenthal’s wound without realizing it, because a little gobbet of blood came off her cuff and hung in her hair like a jewel.
Virginia stared at the bead of blood. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Poor Mr. Rosenthal,” sighed Lorna, sinking against the back of the chair. “Poor him. Poor Juliet. Poor Max. Poor everyone. What a mess.”
At some point during the night Clem summoned a taxi and took Max Deering home to Thorney Grange, and weeks went by after that without any contact. Of course, they glimpsed him and his son at Juliet’s memorial service, but the church was so full that they easily avoided having to speak or shake hands.
In the middle of October, a bouquet arrived at Salt Winds addressed simply To Mrs. Wrathmell, with warm wishes, M. D. It was an extravagant confection of roses, carnations, zinnias, and delicate greenery.
“Very seasonal,” muttered Clem, but Lorna was resolutely touched. She arranged the flowers in a vase and put them in the dining room, by the cabinet with the Meissen cups. It was Max’s way of apologizing, she said, and it drew a line under the whole affair.
Around the same time they heard that Mr. Rosenthal had been arrested as an enemy alien, and that he was going to be interned on the Isle of Man. It was a shame in a way, said Mrs. Hill, because he was a pleasant sort of chap and a bit of a local character. Still, a German is a German, and you can’t argue with that.
NEW YEAR’S EVE 2015
Virginia finds Clem’s obituary in the top drawer of his desk, the one from the local newspaper that she defaced as a child. Strange that it’s been lying here all these years; stranger still to think of Lorna cutting it out and keeping it, ink-stained gash and all.
They used a nice photograph, she’ll give them that. In fact, it’s the same as the one on the dust jacket of his last bird book, where he’s standing by the flint wall in jacket and tie, his hair tufting up in the wind. Underneath the photograph they’d printed Clement Gordon John Wrathmell, 5th April 1895 to ?31st December 1940? but eleven-year-old Vi had taken it upon herself to erase the second date, giving the two question marks on either side a chance to speak for themselves. She remembers doing it, scribbling so hard over the offending words that she ripped a hole in the paper and broke the nib of her fountain pen.
Virginia puts the obituary in her dressing-gown pocket, alongside the wedding photo, and shuts the desk drawer. There are five more drawers full of tobacco-scented relics, and she’s got half a mind to carry on exploring. Half a mind. Yes, exactly. That’s what’s annoying her. The other half of her mind is obsessing about Sophie. It’s impossible to concentrate with another person in the house, even when that person is asleep. Twenty minutes ago she heard a squeaking noise and clumped all the way downstairs to find out what it was, only to glimpse Silver streaking along the baseboard with a mouse dangling from his jaws.
Virginia taps her stick impatiently, wondering what to do. The whole point of coming upstairs was to pull away from the girl; from the new magnetic center of the house. The more distance there was between them, she’d calculated, the less distraction there’d be. It sounds silly now.
Virginia stumps to the top of the stairs and peers down at the closed kitchen door. There’s not a sound, except for the wind, and Silver has disappeared with his catch. Why can’t she just imagine she’s alone? She, who’s been living off imagination and little else for eighty-six years? She’s surely capable of pretending that the house is empty?
It’s because this day is different; that’s the problem. That’s what it all boils down to. Ever since last night, when she found the curlew’s skull on the doorstep, she’s known that this day, more than any other day of her entire life, possesses meaning and weight. Accidental things will not—cannot—happen to Virginia Wrathmell on New Year’s Eve 2015. If a half-familiar girl rolls up in the Salt Winds kitchen on this day of all days, it’s because she’s been sent by Fate, or the Dead, or the Past, or whatever it is that stared back at her, last night, from the bird’s hollowed eyes.
Who are you, Sophie? What have you come here for? Spit it out, girl; there’s not much time. Virginia curls her claws around the banister and thinks about going downstairs—again—and shaking the child awake. But she’s lived long enough, and has read enough stories, to know that Fate and the Dead and the Past won’t give straight answers to straight questions. She’ll have to be patient. Besides, she can’t face staggering down those blasted stairs for the second time in half an hour.
There’s a wooden chest on the landing where spare blankets and pillows are stored. Virginia sits down on the lid to rest her hurting bones and enjoy a proper cough. Her chest is bad this winter, worse than in previous years; every time she wakes up, it’s as though her lungs have shrunk overnight, and there’s a little less room for breathing. It’s a shame the whisky bottle is downstairs, because she could do with another draft of that liquid smoke. She could do with a bite to eat as well; her head feels light.
The church clock hasn’t struck for a while, or at any rate she hasn’t heard it, and she wonders what time it is. The morning’s getting on, and there’s still so much to do. All those boxes and drawers to look through; all those notebooks and letters and photos; all those rooms. There won’t be time for them all. Not now.
Virginia strokes her palm over the lid of the chest. It’s a dark, tomb-sized Victorian monstrosity, and it fits nicely at this end of the landing, against the banisters. This is its proper place. This is where it stood before Clem was born, and this is where it stood throughout his life. Virginia remembers him on his last day, sitting on the lid while he talked to her and laced his walking boots.
It was Lorna who moved the chest, of course, in the spring of ’42. She shifted it in front of the attic door, even though it looked all wrong there, and they both bashed their shins on it whenever they walked past. Not that Virginia argued at the time; she wouldn’t have dared. She just waited, and after Lorna’s death Joe helped her move it down the landing again, back here, to its rightful place. Joe never questioned the ins and outs of these maneuvers; he just did as he was told. He was good like that.
And now Virginia’s got herself thinking about the attic again. She sighs heavily and looks down the landing toward the hidden door. The velvet curtain is still swaying in a
draft. It was moss green when Lorna hung it, but now it’s the color of dust.
It’s seventy-four years to the day since Virginia last went through that door and up the winding stairs to the top of the house. She knows she must face it again before tonight, but she’s not sure she’s ready. For years and years she’s pictured herself in the twilight of her last day, climbing up to the attic, the rest of the house already shut up and in darkness. She’d sit on the broken settee for a while, closing her eyes while the ghosts gathered, and then she’d go. Flashlight in hand, straight downstairs, from the attic to the marsh in a simple, swooping trajectory. Yes, that has been the plan, but now the girl is here. She’s forced to consider Sophie.
The attic is cold and dark. That’s the first thing. In her mind’s eye the attic is hot and golden, with a sun-shaped window in the east-facing gable, and needles of light piercing the roof slates here and there. But decades of polluted rain and spiders’ webs have dulled the round window, and the only thing that penetrates the roof is the drip-drip of water.
Virginia walks on bird droppings to reach the window. The wood feels spongy under her feet—no wonder, when you start counting the number of missing slates—and she ponders how long it will be before it caves in and the rain falls straight through to the bedrooms, and Salt Winds really starts to die. Because Joe won’t try to rescue the place; he knows how Lorna felt about it. Perhaps he’ll sell up.
She unlatches the window and tries to pull it open, but the mechanism has warped and corroded over the years and she’s too weak to shift it. Not to worry. There won’t be much of a view over the marsh today, even from up here, not with the weather like this. That’s what she tells herself, but she continues to stand and stare at the opaque glass.
When at last she turns around, she finds herself face-to-face with the old rocking chair. Rain or mice, or both, have nibbled away at the wicker seat, and its legs are speckled with mold, but it’s still in position—of course it is, why wouldn’t it be?—and Clem’s binoculars are hanging off the back, cobweb-gray and dilapidated. She touches the rocker with her foot and it moves as smoothly as it ever did, rumbling over the floorboards. Clem’s shotgun is there too, a few feet from the chair, its muzzle fuzzy with dust. And there’s the wireless, and the typewriter under its canvas cover; and there’s a dried-up bottle of printer’s ink with Samphire Green on the label, though all that’s left is a gray crust where the lid ought to be. And there, right by her left slipper, despite all Lorna’s desperate scrubbing, is the stain.
The Orphan of Salt Winds Page 7