Bracken was asleep on his side, basking in a slice of hot sunlight, and he didn’t seem worried either. He twitched in response to the bang, as if a fly had landed on his ear, but he didn’t open his eyes. Neither Lorna nor Jozef heard a thing; they were too busy whispering and smoking.
Virginia turned the page, though she wasn’t really reading. Clem had given her this book a year ago today; his hands had touched these covers and riffled its very pages. Clem and Lorna had given it, she should say, though the idea was surely his. There’d been a whole set of hardbacks with sprightly pictures on their dust jackets: Little Women—the one she was reading now—Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Five Children and It, and The Jungle Book. And after she’d unwrapped them they’d had tea, as grand a birthday tea as Mrs. Hill could muster, with shortbread and Welsh cakes, and the periwinkle crockery.
If there was a sound from inside the house a couple of minutes later, Lorna’s laugh masked it pretty well, though Bracken raised his head. Virginia saw the hairs bristling on his neck and remembered that the front and back doors had been propped open to create a breeze.
And then that silky voice, right at the foot of the attic stairs, calling upward and silencing their chatter.
“Hello?”
Everybody froze, lips parted in mid-speech.
“Anybody home?”
Lorna turned her back on Jozef and spread her arms, as if to hide him from view. Then she cleared her throat, tried on a smile, and shouted, “Max! I’m coming! One moment!” Nobody moved, and there was no reply from downstairs. Lorna locked eyes with Virginia and motioned her toward the door.
Yellow spots drifted across Virginia’s vision as she felt her way down the stairs and onto the dark landing. She couldn’t make Mr. Deering out until he moved across her open bedroom door and became a silhouette against an oblong of pink. She could see her unmade bed over his shoulder, with the pillows plump against the headboard and the sheets all tangled.
“Ah-ha!” She couldn’t see his smile, but she could hear it. “The birthday girl!” His hot face touched hers, so that his breath was on her neck, and she thought she’d suffocate in the oily perfume of his hair. Later on, she wondered how he’d managed with two hands, because she distinctly remembered a pressure on the small of her back, and a tight grip on her upper arms, and at the same time her fingers being molded around a square envelope.
“Open it,” he murmured, and she began to fumble—all thumbs—with the seal.
There was a card with a picture of an old-fashioned lady standing by a garden gate. Virginia’s eyes must have been getting used to the light, because Max had dainty handwriting and she managed to read the greeting inside. Dear Virginia, he’d written. Happy 12th Birthday to our favorite girl, from Max and Theo. And then, slipping out of the card, was the photograph—a few square inches of black-and-white gloss—with Max grinning and Lorna squinting and she herself scowling into the sand-blown sunshine. Warren Sands, it said on the back. May 1941.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” His lips were wet on the rim of her ear. “Many happy returns.” But then there was a clatter of feet on the attic stairs and he drew back, and Lorna’s voice came bright and breathless through the gloom.
“Max? Is it you? But I thought you were in London?”
“And yet here I am in Tollbury Point,” he retorted, stepping forward to meet her. He picked up her ink-stained hand, as if to kiss it, but dropped it before it reached his lips.
“Virginia and I were having a big clean up in the attic,” Lorna babbled, dusting down the front of her shirt. “I know I look a fright! I spilled a pot of paint—she probably told you—and now look at me! Not to worry. I’ll go and get changed and we’ll take some tea into the garden.”
Mr. Deering picked up Lorna’s hand again, and opened her palm. The colors of the inks—the greens and blues she’d been using lately—were gray in that half-light. With his forefinger he traced the outline of each spot and spatter, and they waited for him to say something, but he seemed lost in thought.
The ceiling creaked, as though someone in the attic was shifting, ever so carefully, from one foot to another.
“What was that?” Mr. Deering frowned and let go of Lorna’s hand. He set his foot on the bottom stair and peered up through the winding shadows.
Lorna and Virginia exchanged a furtive glance. Mr. Deering narrowed his eyes and took another step, and suddenly the staircase was a racket of scrabbling claws and thudding paws as Bracken came bowling down to join them.
“That dog,” muttered Mr. Deering. He returned to Virginia’s side and Lorna closed the attic door with a flick of her foot.
“Well?” she smiled. “Why don’t we go and sit outdoors, since it’s such a lovely day? It won’t take me a moment to make myself decent.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.” Max’s fingers ran like cold water down Virginia’s spine, and she shuddered. “I can’t stay. I simply came to wish this one a happy birthday.”
“Virginia! Your birthday! Why on earth didn’t you remind me?”
All morning the house had rung with Lorna’s guilt, and Virginia was sick of it. She’d made the mistake of snapping back at one point, which had made things ten times worse.
“I didn’t remind you,” she’d said, “because I wanted you to remember by yourself.” Like Clem would have done, she’d managed not to add.
“Well, we’ll have to mark the day somehow,” Lorna declared testily, wiping her hands down her shirt. “What do you want to do? You can ask a school friend over for tea, if you like.”
“No thanks.” Virginia twisted the toe of her shoe against the attic floor and tried to scowl her blushes away. She could feel Jozef’s scrutiny, even though he was just a blur in the corner of her eye. He would understand, by the way she said No, that she hadn’t got any friends—whereas Lorna would think she was just being difficult.
“All right.” Lorna had just unscrewed the lids from four ink bottles, but now she replaced them, one by one, with a slam and a twist. “Fine. We’ll get the bus into town and you can choose a present. How about that? And I’ll take you for afternoon tea at Delafield’s, just for good measure. Yes?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Virginia tried to sound grateful in the same way that Lorna tried to sound benevolent, and with about as much success.
Lorna ran a lingering hand over her sketches. “Good,” she said. “In that case, I’m going to go and have a quick bath and tidy myself up. I’m sorry you can’t come too,” she added, presumably addressing Jozef, though she was still studying her papers.
Jozef touched her lightly on the wrist. “I’m sorry too. But you’ll both have a wonderful time, and you’ll tell me all about it later. Yes?”
There wasn’t much point in Virginia getting changed, since she didn’t own anything smarter than the skirt and blouse she was already wearing. Her hair was tidy but she brushed it anyway, because she had to do something—even if it was just a gesture—toward Getting Ready to Go Out. Once she’d finished she sat on the edge of her bed with the Warren Sands photo in her hands, and listened to the water thundering from the bath taps.
Someone knocked, and she stuffed the photo into her open drawer.
“What is it?” she called, but it was Jozef—not Lorna—who poked his head through the door. Virginia started to her feet. If there was one unwritten rule—one law—in their disorderly realm, it was that Jozef stayed in the attic during daylight hours and didn’t venture down until night, once the doors and windows were locked and the blackout curtains drawn.
“I wanted to give you this,” he whispered, before she had time to object, and he held out a scroll of papers, tied together with a neat green bow. “Happy birthday!”
She took the scroll with a nervous smile and a glance over his shoulder onto the landing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered back. “Does Lorna know?”
Jozef shook his head. “This is a secret for you and me. I finished
it last week, and I was wondering when to give it, so your birthday is well-timed.”
He waited, eager-eyed, while she undid the bow. The first page read, simply:
“Call of the Curlew”
For Virginia
With all good wishes on her twelfth birthday
J.
Virginia looked up. “You wrote a story for me!”
“I said I would.”
She sat down again and flicked, damp-fingered, through the pages of type. She couldn’t think of what to say. She was overwhelmed.
“Is it really for me? I mean, just for me? Nobody else?”
“Nobody else.”
Virginia had never known anything like it. At the orphanage they used to hand out useful gifts on birthdays—needle cases or pincushions or notebooks for writing recipes in—and you knew what you were going to get in any particular year, because all the girls received the same thing at the same age. Last year had been different, when Clem bought her all those books, but even Little Women and Treasure Island—as wonderful as they were—couldn’t compare to a story that had been written for her, and her alone.
She looked up at Jozef’s expectant face, and down at the bundle of papers. It was like being at the fair and waiting in a line at the fortune teller’s stall. She wanted to read straight away and she wanted to procrastinate. She wanted to believe it meant everything; she wanted to believe it meant nothing at all.
“Is it about me?”
“Maybe.” Jozef smiled. “You’ll have to see.”
She sifted the pages, and individual words caught her eye like flashes of light from a jewel: marsh, father, sand, ship, bird.
By the time she looked up again, Jozef had gone.
“Thank you,” she said to the empty air, and then she took a deep breath and began.
Once upon a time, a king lived with his daughter in a castle on the edge of a marsh. It was a windy and desolate spot, but it was home and they loved it. Every morning they would take a telescope to the window in the highest tower and sit for hours, studying the shifting lights on the waters and listening to the cries of the birds, until they understood the marsh as well as they understood their own thoughts ...
“You seem very preoccupied,” Lorna remarked, while they were waiting at the bus stop by the church. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m fine.”
Virginia was thinking about Clem. How many times had she tried to imagine taking hold of his hand, only to be left feeling empty and sad? Today—by some miracle—it had worked, and when she closed her eyes she could feel the rough leather of his palm against hers.
“So this king,” she whispered, stroking the tendons on the back of his hand. “This king goes out walking one New Year’s Eve, and he finds a beautifully carved wooden curlew on the path beside the marsh—in fact he steps on it by mistake and cracks its wing a tiny bit—and he brings it home and gives it to his daughter. But it turns out that this is no ordinary gift.”
“No?”
“No! Because the curlew is magic, and it can talk.”
“Virginia, what are you doing?” Lorna snapped her handbag shut with a loud click. “Are you talking to yourself?”
“No.”
“Well, I do wish you’d stand still.”
Lorna herself seemed downright nervous, pacing about in front of the bus stop and poking at her hairpins the way she used to do in the old days. Every time a car came puttering along the road from the direction of the Deerings’ house she’d seize Virginia by the arm and pull her backward into the shadow of the lych-gate. It was like being in a spy film, Virginia thought distractedly, though she didn’t dare say so, even as a joke.
She plucked Clem’s sleeve and he smiled down at her.
“What does the magic curlew say?” he prompted.
“It tells them that it belongs to an enchanted ship, which is moored on the other side of the marsh. It’s desperate to get back there, but it can’t fly anymore because of the damage to its wing, and in the end the king agrees to carry it home through the mudflats and treacherous sands. His daughter wants to come too, but he won’t let her.” Virginia laid particular stress on the last sentence, and Clem squeezed her hand to show he understood.
“Virginia? The bus is here.”
They stood aside for the people getting off. Mrs. Hill was among them, and she met Virginia’s eye as she elbowed past, which felt almost—though not quite—like a greeting. Lorna nodded cautiously and murmured, “Afternoon,” but Mrs. Hill pretended not to hear.
The sliding window was open over the seat in front, and a lush breeze blew through the bus. Flowering gardens passed them by, and after that—as they left the village behind—hedgerows and ripe fields and overhanging trees. Even when she closed her eyes, Virginia could smell the greens and yellows, and the splashes of sunshine. She was surprised. She associated August, and her birthday, with dust and tiredness; the ugly end of summer.
“The trouble is,” she said, nestling against Clem’s side, “the king and his daughter and the curlew are not the only characters in this story.”
“No?”
“No. There’s also an evil baron.”
“An evil baron? Oh! I should like to hear about him.”
Clem bent his head to listen.
“Well, you see, this baron pretends to be a friend to the king and his daughter, but deep down he’s eaten up with envy of them and wants their castle, their lands, and all their possessions for himself. When the king disappears into the marsh with the curlew, and a whole year passes without sight of him, the baron thinks his dreams have come true. There’s nobody left to defend the kingdom, except the king’s lonely daughter—and there isn’t much she can do, all by herself, is there?”
“No, indeed.”
Virginia became aware that Lorna was looking at her.
“Are you all right?” she said, in a kindlier tone than before, and Virginia nodded.
Lorna raised her face to the open window and her hair began escaping from its pins, fluttering like ribbons from under the brim of her hat. Virginia thought Lorna would get rattled when she noticed what was happening, but she didn’t. In fact, the farther they got from Tollbury Point, the more tranquil she seemed.
“So what happens?” Clem was nudging her elbow. “Does the baron get his way?”
Virginia shook her head with a slight smile. Somebody farther down the bus was sucking on a peppermint; she could smell it on the breeze. It seemed a lifetime ago, although it was only a year and a half, since she’d worried about being sick over her navy coat and Clem had given her a mint from his pocket.
“He nearly does,” she said. “You feel sure he’s going to, but just as he’s marching with all his forces to the castle, the girl spies the enchanted ship through her spyglass.”
“Oh, so the ship returns?”
“Yes, it comes back right at the end, just when you think it’s disappeared forever. As soon as she sees it on the horizon, the girl sets off across the marsh, but the baron chases after her. Dozens of times she falls and sinks and nearly drowns, but at last she reaches the sea—and there’s the ship, and the magic curlew calling out her name, and—best of all—her father, leaning over the side to help her on board. The baron is hard on her heels and he reaches out a hand to seize her, but the tides seize him instead, and pull him under the mud.”
“Ah-ha! So the evil baron gets his comeuppance?”
“Yes.”
“And the king and the curlew have not been drowned, after all?”
“No.”
“And the three of them live happily ever after, on board the magic ship?”
“They do.”
Clem’s hand was warm on her shoulder, like a patch of sunshine through glass.
“Well, I call that a good ending, Vi,” he said. “A very good ending.”
It was nice to doze against the window and think about him for a while—which was odd, because ever since his disappearance, thinking about Clem had b
een a brutal compulsion, and there’d been nothing nice about it at all. The thought of him was endlessly sad, but today the sadness was tinged with something sweet, like sharp mint tinged with sugar.
They got off the bus before most of the other passengers, because Lorna wanted to walk through the park. Even in the middle of town it felt like a fine day, and the green scent of summer still surrounded them, but now it was mixed up with other smells, like car exhaust, dogs, chip shops, cigarette ends, and hot tarmac. Virginia seemed to see things more vividly than she usually did—she noticed the ducks fighting for tidbits on the pond, and the cornflower sky, and the way Lorna was walking with her shoulders back and her hair blowing, like someone perfectly familiar with happiness. As they turned off into the main street, the park keeper tipped his hat at them and Lorna nodded back with a sort of brimming amusement.
“What a lovely day to have a birthday,” she said, taking Virginia’s arm as they stopped outside the stationer’s shop and studied the window display. “I’m glad we came out, after all.”
Virginia suppressed a smile. Lorna didn’t usually say things like that; she wasn’t one for pleasantries and chitchat—or for taking people by the arm. Virginia felt suddenly proud of her birthday, as if the loveliness of the day were a measure of her own wisdom in choosing to be born in August.
Their eyes roved over notebooks, packets of pencils, labels, paint boxes, bottles of ink, balls of string.
“It’s a shame Jozef couldn’t come with us,” Virginia murmured.
Lorna cupped her hands around her face and pressed them against the window, so as to see more easily through the jostling lights and shadows.
The Orphan of Salt Winds Page 18