Virginia stared at the pliable pallor of Lorna’s grown-up flesh. She couldn’t envy it—not exactly—but even in the midst of this crisis it caught her interest. Lorna’s legs seemed completely different in substance from her own. They were like the soft white lumps of wax you pick off the side of a burning candle and mold between your thumb and forefinger. She wondered whether Mr. Deering had ever molded them between his fingers, and then she caught her tongue between her teeth, as if to bite the thought away and spit it out.
Lorna dragged the cloth from her face and stared back at Virginia.
“Are you staying?”
“I’m not going downstairs again while he’s here. Not until Clem gets back.”
“Stay, then. I don’t mind.”
So Virginia sat down on the linoleum floor with her back against the tub and her feet pressed against the door. Puddles of cold water soaked through her skirt.
“You’ll get wet,” Lorna murmured, and Virginia could tell she had her eyes shut.
“It doesn’t matter. What will we do about Clem?”
Dripping fingers touched her softly on the head and played with her hair. For a long time Lorna made no reply, and Virginia thought she hadn’t heard, but then she said, “You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?” as if it were something she’d just realized.
Virginia dropped her chin onto her knees and they sat together in silence while the bath went cold. The water from Lorna’s hand filtered through her hair and dribbled down her neck, but she didn’t move away. She listened to the dripping tap and improvised little bargains with fate. If I can count to ten in French between two drips then he’ll come ... If I can say my twelve times table without a single mistake, one sum per drip, then he’ll come ... Eventually, as if granting a concession at the end of a hard-fought inner argument, Lorna said, “He loved you too. He loved you for your gratitude.”
The past tense felt like a kick in the stomach, and for a few moments Virginia could hardly breathe, let alone move. As soon as she was able, she staggered to her feet and flung the bathroom door wide open.
“Oh.” Lorna sat forward, her hair trailing over her face like a tangle of fine wires, and held out a spongy hand. “Listen, Virginia, I didn’t mean it badly—”
Virginia hovered in the doorway, ignoring the outstretched hand. Outside the house a motor coughed and rumbled into life, and they turned their heads in unison toward the sound.
“Is that Max?” Lorna whispered. “Is he leaving?”
Virginia went to the spare room and peered down at the driveway . She could just make out the majestic bulk of the Austin 12 as it maneuvered in front of the house before inching its way down the potholed lane and disappearing into the darkness. She waited a couple of minutes, and even then she ventured downstairs with caution. He’d left a folded note on the hall table.
There was a wild lumbering and sloshing from upstairs as Lorna climbed out of the bath.
“Has he gone?” she shouted.
Ladies, I hate to leave you alone at such a time, but Theo will be missing me. I’ll drop by first thing. In the meantime, if there is any news—or should you want me for whatever reason—don’t hesitate to call. You know I’m at your service, day and night. M. D.
Lorna appeared on the landing, tall and dripping in a gray towel. She looked like something out of a myth; a river goddess in a sleeveless gown.
“Yes, he’s gone.”
Lorna nodded slowly.
“For now,” she murmured, as if she’d read the note, word for word, right from the top of the stairs.
Midnight came and went, but they forgot about the New Year—or if they remembered, neither thought it worth mentioning. Lorna sat at the kitchen table, shivering in her dressing gown, while Virginia paced about in search of things to do. She boiled the kettle and stoked the range and hung Clem’s pajamas on the rail to warm. She took Bracken outside. She brought the kettle back to the boil and then did nothing with it. Neither of them said much.
When Virginia was drying up she found a tin at the back of the cutlery drawer, full of string and drawing pins and candle stubs. She took out all the candles—some were an inch high, with black pimples for wicks, but they were better than nothing—and proceeded to place them in all the marsh-facing windows of the house. She was breaking the blackout regulations, but she didn’t care.
When all the windows were lit, upstairs and downstairs, there was one candle remaining. Virginia melted the base and stuck it inside an empty jam jar, pressing it down until it stood unsupported. Then she thought for a moment, before lighting the wick and starting up the attic stairs.
The round window was like an eye in the east-facing gable, staring blindly over miles of bare darkness. Virginia placed the jar on the sill and knelt beside it for a while. It was cold in the attic, with the wind creeping under the slates, and her cardigan was thin. She wanted to look out into the night, but all she could see when she tried was her own face reflected in the glass.
NEW YEAR’S EVE 2015
Sophie pokes her head up the stairwell and calls again. “Hello?” There’s a moment of quiet during which, no doubt, she peers timidly into the gloom and wonders what’s lurking, but before you know it she’s pulled herself together and started the ascent.
Virginia is too appalled to move. She feels like a spider whose web has caught the interest of a curious cat. If she were younger and stronger she would run down and shoo the girl back to the landing, but she can’t do that anymore. She tries to stand more squarely and breathe more deeply, but it ends in a coughing fit.
Sophie jumps when she catches sight of Virginia, but she doesn’t retreat. She hovers inside the doorway, pulling her sleeves down over her hands and trying not to look curious.
“Sorry,” she mutters. Virginia nearly retorts, sorry for what? but it’s obvious the girl won’t understand what she means. It was a diffident greeting, not an apology.
Virginia shuffles and clears her throat, and Sophie seems to take that as an invitation, because she sticks her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and comes right in. Her glance takes in the rocking chair—it’s a not-unattractive antique, apart from anything else, or it would be if the wicker seat were repaired—and Virginia moves sideways in a half-baked attempt to shield it from innocent eyes. At least she hasn’t spotted the shotgun.
There’s one thing in Sophie’s favor: she doesn’t act as if Salt Winds appalls her. As she ventures across the attic floor, crunching through dead wood lice and catching cobwebs in her hair, Virginia is alert for any sign of distaste. But the girl is wide-eyed, and when she reaches the center of the whole space—which is impressive, when you remember to think about it—she turns and mouths a discreet “Wow,” and the old woman can’t help feeling touched.
“You’ve called your parents?” Virginia says. It’s a question, but she makes it sound like an observation.
“I can’t.” The girl touches the rectangular shape inside her pocket as she continues to survey the room. “The battery’s dead.”
Her eyes are still pink, but she’s not shivering much, and she looks more sensible than she did before. She talks quietly and avoids eye contact, but she holds her head up with a conscious firmness as if telling herself, inwardly, Courage!
“You’ll have to use my phone, then,” says Virginia, leaning on the stick with a faint wince and heading for the door. “Come. I’ll show you where it is.”
Perhaps Sophie is not so sensible after all, because she makes no move to follow. She touches the mattress with the toe of her shoe and a cloud of spores puffs up. Her eyes fill, and the corners of her mouth waver, and all the spores have settled before she risks a reply.
“No, it’s OK,” she says. “I don’t want to call anyone.”
Virginia catches hold of Sophie’s arm and they both stagger slightly.
“Oh, but you have to,” she cries. “They’ll be worrying.”
“Will they?” Sophie shrugs and gives a little pout. “Good.”
Virginia’s hand drops as the child moves away from her and wanders toward the window. As she passes the rocking chair, her thigh brushes against the armrest and sets the whole thing in motion. Rumble, rumble go the stately wooden runners, back and forth, and suddenly Virginia is faint. She’s going to be sick; she’s going to fall—but the rocking chair slows and stops, and the feeling passes. So much for whisky on an empty stomach. She draws a shaky breath and the nausea washes over her, and away, like a wave.
Sophie hasn’t noticed anything.
“I’ve run away from home,” she confesses, without a trace of self-mockery. A tear trickles down her cheek and in through the corner of her mouth.
Virginia sighs. If she were sitting down she might feel more indulgent, but as things are, she can only snipe.
“Ah,” she says. “I think I can guess why. They’re all stupid and none of them understands you. Is that it?”
Sophie draws a long, curved line down the window, dispersing seventy-four years’ worth of dust. She is nodding gratefully and her mouth is firm again, for the time being.
“Exactly,” she says with a watery sniff. “That’s exactly it. I just want to be myself—that’s all it is—and they won’t let me. They have all these plans ...”
“Hmm.” It’s as much as Virginia can do to half listen. She’s surprised at how hungry she feels, given this is her last day on earth. When they get downstairs she’ll put some toast on and open a tin of baked beans, but not before giving Joe a ring and asking him to pop round. He’ll know what to do about Sophie. She should have phoned him in the first place.
It’s so difficult to gauge the time, but say it’s noon now ... Virginia screws her eyes shut and calculates in silence. It seems reasonable to hope she’ll have the house to herself by half past one—say two o’clock to be on the safe side—which still leaves a couple of hours of daylight. And of course, she doesn’t have to set out across the marsh the moment darkness falls. She can have all evening at home, if she wants, as long as it’s all over by midnight.
“Do you think going to art school is a cop-out?”
“Pardon?”
“Art school. Do you think it’d be a soft option? For me? My dad says so. His family all read law at Oxford—I mean literally all of them, dating back to the dinosaurs —and he treats it like it’s a kind of inheritance or something, and if you don’t want to you’re just, like, a traitor to the family name or something.”
Sophie scrubs the tears off her face until her skin is burnished red, and Virginia is drawn in, despite herself.
“I’ve nothing against artists,” she remarks. “I used to work for one.”
“Oh?” There’s something rather endearing about the way Sophie looks up, her eyes round and hopeful, like a puppy’s.
“You’ve heard of F. L. Leonard?” Virginia continues, suppressing a very slight—very natural—smirk of pride.
Sophie considers for a moment. “No, I don’t think so ...” It’s obvious she’s disappointed, but she’s nice enough to ask, “What was your job?”
Virginia shrugs. “Oh, I was a jack-of-all-trades, really,” she says, though she regrets her modesty immediately, as the girl turns back to the window and resumes her finger drawing. “Well, I suppose you might say I was a secretary, or—what would you call it these days?—a personal assistant. It was a good life. We traveled a good deal. There was a lot of interest in the States.”
But Sophie isn’t listening. She’s drawing a face in the dust, but she can’t get the nose right. Impatiently, she wipes her palm through the whole thing, clearing a space in the glass, and suddenly they’re no longer looking at spiders’ webs and dirt-filtered light. They’re looking, instead, at a grand vista.
The clouds have moved away, leaving a smattering of snow behind, and the horizon is visible for the first time all day—though whether that daub of crushed pearl belongs to sea or sky or both is anyone’s guess. Aside from the tracery of snow, all the colors are dark and strong, smeared straight from the tube in immense swathes of yellow ochre and Prussian green and Payne’s gray. It’s vast and simple. It would take a bold artist to paint Tollbury Marsh in this mood, thinks Virginia. There’s no charm in it. Nothing to break it up, except the quick flit of a bird here and there, and the odd wooden post.
“Oh!” Sophie exclaims. “It’s so ... It’s beautiful.” She wipes a larger circle in the dust and kneels down so that she can get closer to the glass and take in more of the view. Underneath all the vestiges of distress—the wet face, the pink eyes, the liquid sniffs—there is a core of joy. You can see it in the way she bites her lower lip as she leans this way and that to get a better angle.
“It is beautiful,” Virginia agrees reluctantly. After a moment she gives up on the marsh and watches Sophie instead.
“I knew I was right to come here,” Sophie says, looking at Virginia and then back at the marsh. “I knew it, just from the name. Salt Winds. It’s just so ... I don’t know. Every time they said it, it was kind of like it was speaking to me. Does that sound really lame?”
Virginia’s eyes come back into focus and she leans forward on the stick. Several questions present themselves, but she’s not sure where to start. Sophie is busy cleaning the window again; her question was rhetorical, and she’s not expecting an answer.
“You came here on purpose?” Virginia asks. “You came especially to look at Salt Winds? But I thought you just—well, I don’t know.”
The girl is half listening as she spits exultingly on her cuff and polishes the glass.
“And where exactly did you come from?” Virginia goes on, more briskly. It occurs to her that Joe can run the girl home in his car. In fact, if he’s agreeable, that might be for the best. It’ll save getting the parents involved.
“London.”
“London?”
“Mm.” Sophie is surprised by Virginia’s surprise. She sniffs again, and wipes her dusty sleeve across her nose. “Putney,” she clarifies, before sneezing wetly into her cupped hands.
“Putney?” Virginia rummages in her dressing-gown pocket for a handkerchief. “You came all the way to Tollbury Point from Putney?”
She pulls a balled-up tissue from her pocket and the old wedding photograph comes with it. Sophie wipes her palms and blows her nose as Clem and Lorna flutter to the floor with their posy of gray flowers and their gray half smiles.
“Oh my God!” Sophie exclaims, as she stoops to pick it up. The joy, or excitement, or whatever it is, has got inside her voice now.
“What?” Virginia urges, clutching the handle of her stick with both hands. “What is it?”
Sophie points at the photo and smiles.
“I knew it,” she says. “I knew it! Look. That’s my great-granddad.”
JANUARY 1941
True to his word, Mr. Deering dropped by first thing on New Year’s Day, and Virginia had to let him in because Lorna wasn’t ready. In fact, neither of them was ready, but Virginia was at least dressed, albeit in yesterday’s grubby skirt and cardigan. Lorna was still in her dressing gown, her uncombed hair straggling down her back.
Virginia admired that dressing gown of Lorna’s enormously. It was slate green, like a stormy sea, almost long enough to sweep the floor. And yet that morning it seemed to have lost all its film-star glamour. It made Lorna look chilly and tired and definitely not what Mrs. Hill—or Clem, for that matter—would call proper.
Virginia would have ignored Mr. Deering’s knock altogether, but Lorna kept hissing, “Hurry up and open the door! He doesn’t like to wait!” and she sounded so urgent about it that Virginia didn’t dare argue. She was too tired to care much, anyway. The whole scenario—like the preceding night—felt as slow and detached as a dream; the foggy interlude between Clem’s departure and his eventual return. She held the door open a couple of inches and Mr. Deering sidled in. His arms were full of flowers—great perfumed blooms that seemed out of place in a wartime winter—and he tossed them onto the hall table, as if they were nothi
ng much.
“Any news?” he asked as he shrugged off his coat. Virginia stared at the white lilies and shook her head. The flowers made the hall smell of funerals. Lorna was creeping upstairs, but Mr. Deering caught sight of her before she made it to the landing, and when he said her name she turned and came to meet him.
“Hello, Max!” she said, as if this was a nice surprise, at the same time pulling the dressing gown tight about her throat. “I was just going to get dressed. Give me five minutes?”
He shook his head.
“Less than that,” she pleaded. “Two.”
But Mr. Deering shook his head again and placed his fingers under her chin, tilting it ever so slightly upward. He looked especially glossy this morning, as if he’d rubbed his skin and hair with the same wax polish he used on his car. He stood still for a good minute, studying Lorna’s bare face at arm’s length, and all the time his lips moved playfully without quite breaking into a smile.
“No,” he said, eventually. “Don’t go. You’re lovely as you are. Besides, I’m gasping for my cup of tea.”
“I expect we all are.” Lorna pushed a tangle of hair out of her eyes and tried to smile, but it was difficult to look bright and breezy with someone’s fingertips pressing up against your jaw. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
He ran his thumb down her cheek, touching the corner of her mouth, and dropped his hand.
“Vi can do that.” He turned to Virginia and slipped her a private wink. “You can make us all a cuppa, can’t you?”
Virginia nodded, but she was only half-relieved to escape to the kitchen while they made their way to the sitting room. She stoked the range impatiently—pushing Bracken away when he ambled over in search of his breakfast—and slammed the half-filled kettle down on top. Hurry up, hurry up, she muttered inwardly, as she dusted biscuit crumbs off the tray and grabbed three cups from the draining board, shaking them dry. The milk had been out all night and it smelled like cheese, but it would have to do.
While the water began heaving its way toward the boil she leaned into the hall and listened. After a long time, she heard Mr. Deering speak from behind the sitting-room door. A minute passed—two minutes—and Lorna replied. Armchair springs creaked as someone sat down, and then there was silence. Virginia glanced urgently at the kettle and took the teapot down from the shelf. She wondered what Clem would have her do.
The Orphan of Salt Winds Page 10