Two hours Mr. Deering stayed, although he must have known he wasn’t wanted. Lorna perched on the sofa, her untasted tea going cold in her hands, and Virginia sat beside her, stone-faced, like a middle-aged chaperone from Victorian times. It was damp and cold in the sitting room—it was rarely used, except for visitors—but Lorna didn’t offer to light the fire. Her gaze strayed, now and then, to the window and the lowering clouds.
Virginia wondered what it would take to embarrass Mr. Deering. He sank back in the old armchair, slurping his tea and making trite observations like “Damned Germans ...” and “If anyone can get the better of that old marsh, it’s Clem.” When no one replied he just smoked and smiled and watched them through half-closed eyes.
“Looks like we might have snow,” he remarked at one point, following Lorna’s gaze to the window. “That’ll please Theo, I hope.”
Lorna straightened her shoulders and fixed her smile, as if she’d just remembered she had a guest. “And how is Theo?”
Mr. Deering frowned and ran his finger slowly around the rim of the cup. “Oh, well. He’s fine, all things considered. Doesn’t say much. I think he enjoyed his birthday party yesterday.”
Virginia watched him as he was speaking and thought she glimpsed his dead daughter lurking, like a delicate pencil sketch, beneath the coarsely painted lines of his day-to-day face. So that’s what it took to discomfit him. Of course. Well, it was a relief to know there was something. She relaxed ever so slightly, but when he looked up she saw he’d gone all misty about the eyes and that seemed to make him worse—more dangerous—than before.
“It’s easier for me, in a way, than it is for you,” he said softly, setting the empty cup on the tray. “At least, with Jules, I knew. There was never this dreadful uncertainty.”
When he said that, Lorna had no choice but to look up, and it was as if he’d caught her in a spell, because he held her gaze for ages and ages and ages. Seconds ticked by on the clock—Virginia counted twenty-three—before he sighed and ran his hands over his face. Lorna sat very still, her fingers knotted in her lap.
They all jumped when the front door opened and footsteps crossed the hall. Mr. Deering shot to his feet but Lorna said, “It’s Mrs. Hill.”
“Mrs. Hill? Oh, yes.” Mr. Deering clasped his fidgety hands behind his back and took a turn of the room, stopping at the mantelpiece mirror to slick his hair and study his moustache. “Yes. Well, I’d best be making a move, if you’re sure you can manage.”
Virginia watched him discreetly from under her eyelids, and saw the way his forefinger trembled as it slid over the line of hair on his upper lip. What a fright he’ll have, she thought, when Clem really does come back.
He caught her eye in the mirror and smiled. “I’ll drop in again, sometime this evening.”
“Oh, but really—” Lorna protested weakly, getting to her feet. Mr. Deering took hold of her chin again, and this time he didn’t just prop it up—he gripped it between his thumb and his knuckle.
“But of course I will, Lorna,” he said. “It’s natural I should worry about you. Isn’t it, though?”
As soon as he’d released her she nodded, and a split second later she remembered to smile as well. His thumbnail had made a pink crescent moon on her skin.
When he’d gone, Lorna picked up the bouquet from the hall table and handed it to Virginia.
“Put these in some water, would you?” she said, wearily. “There’s a vase under the kitchen sink. And just check Mrs. Hill’s all right. I’m not sure I can face her, on top of everything else.”
Virginia wasn’t especially keen to face her either; there was a lot of angry clattering going on behind the kitchen door. It sounded as though Mrs. Hill had decided to clean the cupboards in Clem’s absence. Bracken was scratching diffidently on the back door while saucepan lids crashed and spun like cymbals.
“No, wait!” Virginia bounded up the stairs after Lorna, scattering yellow pollen in her wake. “Wait!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, what?” Lorna wheeled around, just inside her bedroom door. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get dressed.”
Virginia pushed the flowers away, crushing them against the V-neck of Lorna’s dressing gown and staining the lapels with gold-brown dust. Lorna hadn’t much choice but to take them in her arms, though a couple of stalks missed and tumbled to the floor.
“What—?”
“They’re your flowers; you put them in water.” Virginia had to fight so hard for breath between each word, she thought she must be having some sort of fit. “You’re married to Cl—to Clem; you’ve no business taking flowers off another man. It’s disgusting.”
She hadn’t meant, when she started, to use a word like disgusting; neither had she meant her voice to waver up and down. She half expected a slap on the cheek and braced herself, tight-jawed, but Lorna sighed and leaned against the doorframe. Two more lilies dropped from her hands while she considered how to reply.
“He’ll want to know where I’ve put them,” she explained, eventually. You could tell from her voice that she hadn’t slept all night; she sounded as though she’d keel over if the wall weren’t propping her up. “That’s all it is. He’s one of those people who always ask after their own gifts. He likes to make sure they’re being enjoyed.”
“So?” Virginia wept. “Tell him you put them straight in the dustbin! We don’t want his stinking flowers! Why do you have to do whatever he wants?”
Lorna’s shoulders drooped. She drifted into the bedroom and stood in front of the mirror. Virginia followed, grinding the flowers into the rug with her shoes.
“Why?” she persisted.
Lorna placed a couple of hairpins between her teeth and began brushing her hair with long, languid strokes. Virginia stood behind and glared at her reflection.
“Tell me why.”
“I feel sorry for him,” Lorna shrugged. “Of course I do. His wife’s dead, his daughter ...”
“Are you in love with him?”
Lorna closed her eyes. She rolled her hair up to the nape of her neck and stabbed it with one of the pins. “No, I am not.”
“Then why act like you are?”
The pin dropped, spilling hair all the way down Lorna’s back again. She growled and threw the brush across the dressing table.
“I’m thinking of you, aren’t I?” Lorna said, pressing her hands to her temples. “Of you and me. We’re alone, Virginia, do you understand me? We are two women alone in this big, empty house. We cannot afford to make an enemy of Max Deering.”
“But Clem—”
“Clem is not here.”
They stared at one another. Lorna said it again, but this time she said it slowly and roundly, as if she were talking to a simpleton.
“Clem. Is. Not. Here.”
When Lorna began to dress, Virginia just stood in the middle of the room and watched through the blur, unable to move away because of the shuddering in her knees. She tried to say I hate you, but it came out as a small, blubbery noise, which Lorna affected not to hear.
Lorna got ready with uncharacteristic haste, leaving the dressing gown in a slippery heap on the floor and laddering her first stocking on a toenail. Normally she’d have folded it up and put it in the mending basket, but on this occasion she tossed it to the end of the bed with a curse. She didn’t choose her clothes, she just grabbed them from the cupboard—a gray tartan skirt and a holly-green sweater darned at the elbows. When she was done, she had another stab at fixing her hair, but the pins kept falling out, so she bundled it up inside a headscarf and left it at that.
Virginia watched as Lorna picked up a lipstick and unscrewed the cap, staring at the greasy red tip as if she’d forgotten what to do with it. She seemed dreamy and tired again.
“The thing is, you see ...” She put the lipstick down, unused. “Max and I were engaged once. But then I married Clem instead, and Max was—well, you can imagine. He doesn’t like to be crossed. Nor will he admit defeat.”
Lorna lifted a pearl necklace from her jewelry box and began to fasten it at the back of her neck. Virginia watched her. The scene in the mirror was so peaceful that she was almost taken in by it. They looked like two girls in an old Dutch painting, with all the even light and stillness that implied. A Lady with Her Maid, or something along those lines. As Lorna lowered her arms, snowflake shadows began sliding down the bare wall opposite the window.
“It’s probably the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” Lorna observed.
“What is?”
“Breaking it off with Max.”
Virginia looked up hopefully. “And you did it because you were in love with Clem?”
Lorna closed the lid of her jewelry box and rested her fingertips on the lid. “I suppose that’s what I told myself at the time. It’s what I told everyone else.” She hesitated before pushing the box away. “I don’t know why I’m telling you, though. What are you—twelve? Too young for such nonsense.”
I’m eleven, Virginia thought, but she didn’t say so. She went to the window to watch the snow fall and thought of Clem out there on the marsh, waiting for the conditions to come right so that he could walk safely home. He must be starving by now. At least he wouldn’t be thirsty, because there’d be snow to eat. She pictured him sitting on a tussock of grass and sticking out his tongue to catch the falling flakes.
The encroaching snowstorm turned the bedroom darker by the second, as if night were coming on at reckless speed. A knock on the half-open door made them both jump.
“Who is it?” Lorna called breathlessly. It was Mrs. Hill, stepping over the broken lilies.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Wrathmell.” Mrs. Hill’s face was lined with sorrow, as if she’d been crying for years. She peered at the silky tumble of dressing gown, the open lipstick, the carpet of lilies, the pearls around Lorna’s neck. “I was wondering how many there’d be for lunch?”
The question was loaded with a hostility that made Lorna stare. She began pointing from person to person. “One ... two ... three,” she counted leadenly, like someone teaching numbers to a child. “There would appear to be three of us at home today.”
“Oh, don’t include me. I won’t eat a thing,” Mrs. Hill retorted. “I wondered whether you were expecting any gentlemen friends? Max Deering ... ?”
Virginia looked fearfully from Lorna to Mrs. Hill. It struck her that the household had no meaning without Clem; until he returned, Salt Winds was nothing but a big, cold structure and three strangers standing in a room.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Lorna elbowed past Mrs. Hill and broke into a run on the landing. Virginia listened to her flying up the attic stairs and pacing about overhead. Her steps were bolder—fiercer—than they used to be when she went up there at night.
“Slut!” Mrs. Hill muttered, under her breath.
“Don’t speak about her like that!” Virginia wiped her wet face on her cardigan sleeve. “You wouldn’t say things like that if Clem were here!”
“No, I’d just think it, and so would he.” Mrs. Hill began picking lilies off the floor. “He knew, all right. He knew what he’d married.”
“Stop!” When Virginia stamped her foot she felt as though the house was about to collapse on top of them; she could almost hear the fractures spreading out from under her shoe, over all the floors and walls. “Stop! You’ve no right to say such awful things! Who do you think you are?”
“Who do I ... ?” Mrs. Hill laughed shortly and straightened up. “Who do I think I am?”
She stared at Virginia, and Virginia stared right back.
“Forty-eight years,” Mrs. Hill quavered. “Forty-eight years I’ve served this family, and look what’s left ...” Her eyes filled and she threw the flowers at Virginia’s feet, like a sarcastic tribute.
“You can get your own lunch,” she said, and five minutes later she marched from the house and slammed the front door hard behind her.
Even so, Virginia needn’t have been lonely. People were calling at the house all afternoon—not just the young police constable and neighbors from last night, but friends and official-looking men from farther afield. The first few times Virginia went downstairs and told them Lorna was asleep, and they went away again, having nothing urgent to say or do. After a while she stopped answering the door.
It wasn’t until dusk that the strange man appeared in the back garden. Virginia was sitting on the windowsill when his moving shadow caught her eye. Bracken pricked up his ears and gave a low growl, but after a moment’s thought he seemed to doubt his instincts and went back to sleep on the bed. Virginia made herself small and still and kept watching.
The snow made such a whirl against the window, and the light was so poor, and she’d been willing Clem to appear for so long that at first she thought she’d conjured a phantom. She glimpsed the man for a moment as he staggered across the grass, back bent, and slipped inside the toolshed, but even so, phantom or not, it obviously wasn’t Clem. True, their gray coats were practically identical, but this coat was plastered with mud, and the body inside it was nothing like Clem’s: it was too tall and slim, and too guarded in its movements.
Virginia waited for the next thing to happen—after all, he couldn’t mean to stay in the toolshed—but the light thickened, and nothing moved. After five minutes had passed, she slid to her feet. She was oddly glad, because at least it gave her an excuse to find Lorna.
Lorna was just visible through the crack in the attic door, lying on the old mattress with her hands behind her head. It was too dark to tell whether she had her eyes closed, or whether she was staring up at the rafters. There was a pile of papers on the floor beside her with a packet of cigarettes on top, and the air tasted sharply of smoke. It was freezing up here, and the round window was spattered with snow, but Lorna had wrapped herself up in a couple of moth-eaten blankets, and she looked comfortable enough. The shape of her head and arms reminded Virginia of that faraway look she’d had, last night, in the bath.
She jumped up when Virginia knocked, and shoved the papers under the mattress.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, Virginia, I’ve left you alone too long ...”
“There’s a man in the garden.”
Lorna stopped fidgeting with her hair and lowered her arms.
“Clem?” she whispered, following Virginia’s example.
“No, not Clem, just this strange man. I don’t know ... he ran across the grass into the shed.”
They started down the stairs together, quickly and quietly, Lorna leading the way. A sudden inspiration made Virginia raise her voice.
“Maybe it’s Mr. Rosenthal?”
“Mr. Rosenthal? You mean the knife grinder?” Lorna sounded less than convinced. “What would he be doing in our shed?”
“Maybe he’s escaped from the police. That would explain why he looked so furtive: he’s looking for somewhere to hide.”
Lorna didn’t say anything. Virginia followed her to Clem’s study and watched as she rummaged in his desk for a key before unlocking the corner cupboard. The twilight was heavier in here than in her bedroom because the furnishings were dark and the walls were lined with leather books.
“What are you doing?”
Taking the weight in both hands, Lorna lifted a long cloth bundle from the cupboard and laid it gently on the rug. There was a peculiar smell—an exciting smell—as the cloth fell away, a bit like the whiff of sulfur you get when you strike a match.
Virginia crouched down as Lorna drew back the last fold.
“I didn’t know Clem kept a shotgun.”
“It’s not loaded,” Lorna whispered. “But it looks the part. We may as well take it.”
They didn’t bother with hats and coats—it seemed a bit fussy in the circumstances—but the rubber boots were standing in a row by the back door, so they put them on. Virginia waited to be told to return to her room—Clem would have insisted on it ages ago—but it never seemed to cross Lorna’s mind. She even asked Virginia to
hold the shotgun while she shook a stone from one of her boots.
“Ready?” Lorna whispered, taking the weapon back and crooking her finger around the trigger. Virginia nodded, caught halfway between gratitude and mild resentment. This wasn’t the sort of thing proper mothers got up to with their daughters. On the other hand, it was exciting.
The wet snow flew in their faces, as if it were coming up off the marsh instead of down from the sky. The flakes were beginning to collect on top of the flint wall and alongside the house, but the lawn was still pulpy with mud. Side by side they plowed the few yards to the shed, their heads bowed, while the wind whipped their hair and clothes. Virginia almost took hold of Lorna’s hand—she would have taken hold of Clem’s in much less dramatic circumstances—but she decided not to, for fear of seeming childish. Besides, Lorna needed both hands for the gun.
There was no temptation to dither in such wild weather. Whoever was—or wasn’t—lurking in the shed, they needed to find out quickly. Lorna gestured to Virginia to unlatch the door, and as soon as it was done she swung it open with the toe of her boot.
It may have been dark, but there was undoubtedly someone there; the air was vibrating with his efforts to shiver quietly. There was a moment of stillness before the hoe fell off its nail in the wall and something else clattered against the wheelbarrow, and Lorna swallowed, raising the shotgun higher. Virginia saw a tall shape against the back wall, and the gleam of an eye, and two pale palms held up in surrender.
“Please,” he said. “Please.”
He definitely wasn’t English. His teeth were chattering so violently that it was difficult to glean much else from his voice, beyond the obvious fact he was cold. He smelled of wet wool and mud. Normally the shed smelled of dry compost and tarpaulin.
The Orphan of Salt Winds Page 11