“Is it Mr. Rosenthal?” Virginia murmured, standing on tiptoe to look over Lorna’s shoulder. There was something about him—his accent, and the shadowy shape of his body—that convinced her. “It is, isn’t it?”
Lorna’s fingers tightened around the gun.
“Virginia?” she said, in a shaky approximation of her usual voice. “I want you to run back to the house and telephone the police.”
“Please, no,” said the man, stepping forward. “Please wait.” His hands were still raised, but he was opening them out in a pleading gesture instead of holding them up on either side of his head.
“Oh God.” Lorna spoke so quietly that the words were more like shapes in the darkness than actual sounds. As she readjusted her hold on the shotgun, her wedding ring clinked against the hollow barrel.
“Virginia, do as I say.”
Virginia trudged back to the house, but she didn’t go straight in. She stood on the back step for several minutes, rubbing her arms and peering out in the direction of the marsh. The snowflakes hurtled toward her face, and she stared at them for so long that she lost her bearings and began to feel as though it were she who was hurtling toward them.
“Clem,” she whispered, in case that was the magic word that would bring him back, but the wind blotted it against her lips instead of carrying it out to sea. She waited a minute, repeating the spell, but he didn’t materialize, so she turned into the kitchen. Her socks were wet and she couldn’t get her boots off by herself, so she kept them on and made a trail of watery footprints across Mrs. Hill’s clean floors.
The telephone table was underneath the window by the front door. Virginia went to it—she even picked up the receiver—but she didn’t dial. She kept picturing the black police van that would take Mr. Rosenthal away. Mr. Deering was bound to be on the scene—one way or another he’d come, even if it wasn’t any of his business—and what if he started stamping and screaming like last time? What if the police let him? With Clem away, there’d be nobody to intervene. She set the phone down and tried to stop shivering.
The back door opened again and a flurry of wind moved through the house, stirring curtains and banging doors. Lorna must be bringing him inside, because there was a brief exchange of voices and the sound of a chair being pulled back. A few seconds later the curtains were drawn with a rackety noise and the kitchen light came on.
Virginia kept her fingers tight around the black receiver, listening as the door of the range clanged open and new coal was scattered over the fire. Lorna asked a short question, which was followed—inexplicably—by a swishing sound, like scissors cutting through cloth. Now the visitor was talking, quietly and rapidly, and Lorna was saying, “Hush, hush.” Virginia let go of the telephone and crept up to the kitchen door.
The man was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped up in Bracken’s hairy blanket. His coat was heaped in Lorna’s arms, a dripping mess of mud and snow, one of its sleeves slashed open and hanging down. He did not match Virginia’s mental image of Mr. Rosenthal. For some reason she’d had him down as long-faced and gray, with bony cheeks and wise eyes. She’d never have guessed he was beautiful.
He watched Lorna as she dumped the coat’s filthy remains by the back door and crossed the kitchen to the sink. He was cradling one of his hands against his chest, and Virginia noticed that the fingers were all purple and swollen, which at least explained the scissored coat sleeve. Lorna spent a long time washing her hands under the tap without saying anything. Virginia was glad she’d abandoned the shotgun; perhaps it implied a change of heart. The weapon was propped up against the dresser, with drops of snow rolling down its muzzle, and Bracken was giving it a good sniff. He didn’t seem remotely interested in the visitor. Virginia pictured the yapping, wheeling, scrabbling madness there would be when Clem came home at last.
“I’ll try and bind it, if you want,” Lorna said, turning off the tap but continuing to face the sink. “You ought to see a doctor, though.”
The man couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the back of Lorna’s head, although there was nothing unusual—as far as Virginia could see—about her knotted scarf and the few stray corkscrews of hair. Lorna held on to the edge of the sink as she waited for him to reply, but he remained silent. In the end she turned to face him and, in doing so, spotted Virginia lurking in the doorway.
“Well?” she demanded briskly, drying her hands on a tea towel. Her face was so rosy you’d think she’d been sitting right next to a fire. “Have you telephoned?”
Virginia shook her head and Lorna raised her eyebrows a fraction. She came out to the hall, closing the door behind her.
“You haven’t?” she whispered. “Why ever not?”
“I couldn’t.” Virginia twined her fingers nervously. “Clem likes Mr. Rosenthal.”
They were standing face-to-face, almost touching, but Lorna was no more than a silhouette against the dim wallpaper. Virginia readied herself for an argument—Lorna and the law versus Mr. Rosenthal—but before anything was said, something cold touched her wrist. Lorna had taken hold of her hand.
“Vi?” she said softly. “Listen. I have to tell you something about that man. It’s—”
She stopped. Virginia wasn’t interested in grown-up generalizations, and didn’t want to hear Lorna’s thoughts on enemy aliens and internment camps, but she waited anyway, out of polite habit. The silence went on. Lorna seemed to be staring toward the front door, as if she’d lost her train of thought.
“Oh no,” she muttered, dropping Virginia’s hand and walking swiftly to the window. “Oh no, no, no. Not now. Not now!”
Virginia hardly needed to look, but she turned anyway and watched Mr. Deering’s car approach the house.
NEW YEAR’S EVE 2015
For a brief, giddying moment Virginia thinks the girl is trying to claim Clem as her great-granddad. But Sophie isn’t looking at Clem. She’s pointing at a blur in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph, a figure that consists of little more than a jacket collar and a slice of trilby hat.
“You can’t see him very well,” Sophie says. “But it’s definitely him.”
Virginia can also tell, now that Sophie has pointed him out. There are a dozen people milling in the door of the church, and he’s right at the back of the group, turning away, half obscured by someone’s fox-fur stole. Virginia takes the photo out of Sophie’s hand and stares. She must have known already, and mentally blocked it out. She must. How many years is it, after all, since she really studied this picture?
“Let me think. He’s my dad’s ... dad’s ... dad,” Sophie explains. There’s something rather sweet about her pride, but it vanishes in a blink and she looks much older as she says, “It’s his fault about the Oxford thing, really. He was the first to go and read law, and then he made his son go too, and then my dad. And now Dad and Granddad Theo are both on at me.”
Sophie reaches for the photo again and Virginia hands it back, unthinkingly. She shifts her aching weight from foot to foot, and tries to focus on the framing of a question.
“So ...” It’s all so simple, but at the same time terribly difficult, like trying to think straight when you’re emerging from a dream. “So your surname ... ?”
Sophie is poring over the photograph. “It’s Deering,” she says, without looking up. “Same as him.”
“Deering.” Virginia repeats the name and the whole day is realigned, like a jigsaw that’s suddenly slotted into place.
“Oh my gosh, so this person here—the bride—what was her name?”
“Lorna.”
And now Sophie is full of questions. “How old was she? She hardly looks old enough to get married. And what was his name? What year was this photo? How are they related to you?” Virginia feels compelled to answer, although her mind is busy with its own obsessions.
Now that the truth is out, Virginia can’t see anything but Deering in the girl’s moonlike pallor and satin-black hair. She wonders how she ever missed it. And it’s not just the
way she looks, either. There’s something very Deering about a gentle voice that persists with questions, even when the questionee is patently flagging. “So when did they adopt you? Was it because they couldn’t have children of their own? Did you look for your real parents? Did you know my great-granddad? Did you know him well?” Perhaps she is cut out to be a lawyer after all. Perhaps it’s in the blood, whether she likes it or not.
Admittedly the girl has a milky, childish scent, which bears no resemblance to her forbear’s hair oils and masculine soaps. Nevertheless her scent is, by definition, the scent of a Deering, and Virginia can’t bear to breathe it in, so she twists away—pins and needles or no—and tries to rest her gaze on something neutral. But there is nothing neutral in the attic at Salt Winds. She turns in desperation to the window and sees the rocking chair, stark black against the winter light.
“You’re probably cold,” says Sophie, touching her on the arm. “Sorry if I’m babbling.”
Virginia flinches when those sharp white fingernails press into her sleeve, but she doesn’t shake them off, and when Sophie asks if she’d like help going down the stairs, she doesn’t protest. She’s not entirely lacking in pragmatism. If Sophie doesn’t maneuver her down those winding attic stairs, she won’t be going anywhere today; she’s too stiff and weak to make it on her own. She has to get downstairs for something to eat and a good rest before she can face the evening’s walk.
Halfway down, Virginia stumbles on her own stick, but Sophie catches her around the waist and keeps her from falling. The child may be slight, but she’s sinewy, and Virginia leans into her. She doesn’t want to, but she has to.
“Your great-grandfather was strong,” Virginia hears herself say. “Not a big man, like Clem, but strong. Wiry.”
Sophie is frowning with concentration and doesn’t reply until they reach the landing.
“It’s amazing to think you actually knew him,” she exclaims once they’re safe, her face clearing as Virginia extricates herself and her stick. “He’s like this mythical figure in our family that we’re all meant to live up to, and I hardly know anything about him.”
“What do you know?”
Sophie meanders down the landing, peering through half-open doors, and Virginia wishes she would stand still while she answers the question.
“Well, I know he had all these terrible things happen to him,” Sophie says, and she enumerates, on her fingers, the trials of Max Deering. “First his wife died when their children were really small; then he got engaged to this woman who left him for his best friend; and then his daughter got killed in the Blitz.”
Virginia gives a noncommittal nod. Put like that, how diminished his losses become. What a fuss about nothing. Sophie obviously agrees, because she looks quite cheerful now, as she contemplates the three acknowledged tragedies of Great-Granddad Max. Virginia’s mouth curls into something like a smile. What a lost soul the girl was, just a few hours before, when she was sitting on the flint wall and thinking about her chances of getting to art school.
“But then something else happened,” Sophie goes on. “I don’t know what it was, but it had something to do with Salt Winds.”
The smile—such as it is—freezes on Virginia’s lips. Something else happened. Yes, indeed it did, but Sophie is too distracted to notice the effect of her words. She’s flitted into Virginia’s bedroom now, and Virginia is forced to limp in pursuit. Briefly she fears for her privacy and all her precious things—the curlew’s skull, in particular—but then she remembers her fatalistic new creed and relaxes a little. Whatever is meant to happen today will happen. If the child drops the bird’s head on the floor and treads the pieces into the rug, it doesn’t matter. Nothing will have changed.
“How do you know it had to do with Salt Winds?” Virginia demands, as she reaches the bedroom door. Sophie has, indeed, spotted the curlew’s skull and is crouching down to study it more closely. She doesn’t touch it, though.
“I just do. In our family, the name ‘Salt Winds’ has got this kind of aura of horror about it.” She chooses the word horror carefully. In fact, she chooses all her words carefully, pausing every now and then to think. “Even after my great-granddad died—which was way before I was born, so it’s not like I remember him—Salt Winds was this ... this thing that you sometimes heard whispered, and never asked questions about. I didn’t even know it was the name of a house until Granddad Theo told me he used to go there as a boy.”
Virginia walks toward the window, and her reflection comes to meet her. The watery light is coming from the other side of the house now. Midday has passed; the seesaw is tipping toward night.
“Granddad Theo,” she laughs, too quietly for Sophie to hear, before raising her voice to ask, “What else did he tell you? He must have said something else?”
“Well, no. Not really.” Sophie comes to stand next to her and their arms touch. The girl is still shivering, and no wonder when you consider how she’s dressed. What on earth was she thinking, on a December day like this? Silly child. Not that it matters. It’s no business of Virginia’s if a Deering chooses to die of exposure.
“It was like he’d inherited this superstition about the place. All he said—eventually—was that he’d grown up in a village called Tollbury Point, and he used to visit a house called Salt Winds with his father, during the war. And then suddenly, when he was twelve, the visits stopped and they moved to Putney, and he wasn’t allowed to ask any questions about it, or mention it at all. The one time he tried, his father thrashed him so hard he broke his arm.”
“Hmm,” Virginia replies, pursing her lips. The girl is expecting a better reaction than that—He broke his own son’s arm? How horrible!—but Virginia is unmoved. Instead, she’s been concentrating on Sophie’s voice rather than her words; straining to catch the Deering timbre. Sometimes she thinks she hears the faintest whisper of Max a split second behind, repeating everything his great-granddaughter says. Sophie’s tone is childishly earnest, but the echo is contemptuous, as if to say, I’m still here, Miss Wrathmell. You might have known I’d still be here.
Virginia decides to match her voice to the echo, and fight mockery with mockery.
“So,” she says, folding her arms across her chest and swallowing a cough. “You fancy yourself as a bit of an amateur sleuth, do you? Dragging skeletons out of cupboards for the fun of it?”
Their eyes meet in the window. Virginia’s gaze is steadfast, but Sophie’s is anxious.
“I didn’t mean to cause any ... It was partly curiosity. But it was mainly because I knew they wouldn’t look for me here.”
“Your family sounds surprisingly superstitious, given they’re all so highly educated?”
“Yes.” Sophie is on firmer ground. “When it comes to Salt Winds they are superstitious. Well, Dad and Granddad Theo, anyway. That’s exactly the right word.”
Virginia bats the air impatiently and moves back into the room. It’s not for her to scoff at other people’s demons. God knows she’s plenty of her own. Besides, the girl’s private reasons for coming are unimportant. The question—the urgent question—is what to do with her now she’s here.
Virginia sighs. She has to take the weight off her feet before her legs give way, so she lowers herself onto the edge of the bed. It’s a bit soft and low for sitting on, but it’s better than nothing. She can look straight into the curlew’s left eye socket from this vantage point, and she searches it for an answer, but it stares back without giving anything away. Virginia frowns and strokes the frayed bedspread, seeing it in her mind’s eye when it was rose pink and new. It’s a sort of fawn color now, or at least it is on top where the sun has bleached it. The wallpaper’s in much the same state.
“You’re thinking I ought to ring them, aren’t you?” Sophie asks. She’s followed Virginia across the room and now she’s standing by the bed, running a nervous finger around the phone in her pocket.
“No!” Virginia’s eyes snap open. She may not know what to do, but she kno
ws what not to do. Somehow or other, the Deering girl belongs to the mysteries of this day, and there’s no question of her leaving now. Not any longer. Everything has changed.
“Anyway, I thought you said the battery was dead?” Virginia is trying hard to sound indifferent—too hard, perhaps, because her voice is trembling.
“That’s true,” Sophie agrees. “But I think ... Did you say it’d be OK if I used your phone? Not that I necessarily want to ring them, yet. It’s just ...”
The girl’s shivers become more pronounced and her eyes start swimming again.
Virginia gathers herself. “Before you do anything, let’s go down to the kitchen and make a pot of tea.” Her tremors subside as her confidence grows, and she thinks she sees a gleam at the back of the curlew’s eye. “What do you think? We both need a hot drink and a bite to eat. And then we can see.”
She staggers to her feet to show she means it, and Sophie nods obediently. “Actually, that would be nice.”
They hobble onto the landing arm in arm, but when they reach the top of the stairs, Virginia halts.
“I’ve forgotten something,” she says.
“Oh, do you want me to—”
“No. You carry on downstairs and fill the kettle. I’ll be half a minute.”
Virginia wasn’t intending to use violence. All she meant to do was fetch her nail scissors from the dressing table and snip through one of the wires to make the telephone impotent. And then, since she was passing the wretched thing on her way to the bedroom, it seemed simpler—less destructive, in fact—to unhook it from the wall and hide it.
The trouble is, it won’t unhook. She’ll need a screwdriver, and even then she’ll have a job, because the screws are fiddly small and rusty and difficult to get at. She tries to unplug the cord but it won’t budge, so she yanks at it, first with one hand and then, instinctively, with two, growling through her teeth as her walking stick falls to the floor.
The Orphan of Salt Winds Page 12