The Orphan of Salt Winds

by The Orphan of Salt Winds (retail) (epub)

“Don’t you go leaving anyone out.”

  The pack quivered with amusement, but Theo kept a straight face. “We won’t.”

  “And you’re not to eat a crumb of that food until teatime. Understood?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Bellamy.”

  The boys rustled with excitement as she creaked away down the stairs. When she’d definitely gone, Theo took a jam sandwich from the table and pulled it apart. The others watched him with a kind of admiration as he swallowed it in two mouthfuls and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “You’re ‘It.’” Theo tossed his order across the room, and the others followed its trajectory with their eyes. Virginia shrugged; she’d expected worse. At least if she was “It” she’d be alone for a minute or two while she was supposed to be counting.

  “Well? Go on then.”

  Virginia covered her eyes and began slowly. “One ... two ... three ... four ...” When she was sure they’d all left, she lowered her hands from her face and looked out of the window again.

  Mrs. Hill came into view, walking down the main street with her back to Thorney Grange. Mrs. Hill with her claret headscarf and herringbone coat and a shopping basket over one arm. The sight of her was so redolent of times past—of a warm, gossipy kitchen, and rabbit pies and marmalade making; of God in his heaven and Clem in his study, and all well with the world—that Virginia almost banged on the window, with the unformed idea that she might beg some of these things back if she asked nicely enough.

  “Ten ... eleven ... twelve ...” Virginia murmured, as Mrs. Hill carried on. But what was she doing now? Pausing to wave; trying to attract the attention of someone farther down the street. Whoever it was must have seen her, because she stopped waving and stood waiting, her hands folded under the handle of her basket and her headscarf fluttering near her ears. Virginia shivered. Someone was walking over her grave, as Mrs. Hill herself would have said.

  “Fifteen ... sixteen ... seventeen ...”

  The man Mrs. Hill had hailed came pushing his clunky tricycle along the middle of the street, stopping to lean on the handlebars while the two of them exchanged a few words. Virginia stopped counting. Slowly—very slowly, and hardly daring to breathe, as if the slightest movement might be fatal—she rested her fingertips on the glass. Rosenthal Knife-Grinding and Repairs. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the words were still there, emblazoned in white letters across the trunk at the back of the trike. The door of the playroom opened behind her and shut again softly, but she paid no attention.

  That man in the street was Mr. Rosenthal; the real Mr. Rosenthal who’d come to Salt Winds all those months ago in order to sharpen the kitchen knives and mend Clem’s shears. Virginia tried to convince herself he wasn’t, but he was. There was no helping it. This was Mr. Rosenthal, and Mr. Rosenthal was not Jozef. He was an old man with gray hair and leathery skin and wrinkles near his eyes and a big greasy coat.

  Virginia stared and stared as Mrs. Hill chattered and the knife grinder listened. Every now and then he bowed slightly, and once he scratched his ear, but he didn’t have much to say.

  The floorboards creaked right behind her, and a damp darkness pressed itself against her eyes. She recognized Mr. Deering by the soapy scent of his hands and the metallic bite of his signet ring.

  “Guess who?” The question licked at her ear.

  If it hadn’t been for Mr. Rosenthal she’d have frozen with fear, but above all else Virginia wanted to keep looking; to keep gauging the reality of the man outside, with his ancient face and tradesman’s tricycle. She batted Mr. Deering’s hands away with more impatience than fear, and as she did so the pair in the street began to draw away from one another, nodding their good wishes and farewells. Virginia stood on tiptoe to see which way the knife grinder would go, but Mr. Deering’s hands came over her eyes again. He wasn’t so gentle this time, and he began pressing against her from behind as well, squashing her body against the windowsill.

  “Stop it!” There was no space in which to turn or hit out; all she could do was shout. “Stop it! I need to see!”

  Virginia twisted and bit, but her teeth found only the thick weave of his jacket, and all the time he was laughing at her and making soothing noises. At one point her nose got pressed up against his shirtfront, and she was surprised by the flabby softness of his chest. She’d thought he’d feel more solid than that; an edifice of stone.

  “Shush now!” he cooed, as if she were a fractious baby, though his hands were tight around her wrists and his face was buried in the curve of her neck. He seemed to be everywhere, like a noxious vapor that swirls and spreads and fills every last space, until she felt as though she were breathing him in. She became dizzy for lack of air, and when she closed her eyes she saw tiny lights popping on and off inside her head.

  With one almighty effort, she placed her palms flat against his chest and shoved. Mr. Deering looked so surprised as he staggered backward that Virginia might have laughed, if she hadn’t felt so desperate. His arms flailed and he fell, dragging a dining chair with him, and a great bunch of balloons burst, one after another, in quick succession, like a volley of gunfire. She saw the whites of his eyes and the black circle of his mouth as it searched in vain for words—or even sounds. When she began to run he rolled onto his front and clutched at her ankles with both hands, but she was too far away and too fast.

  “You bloody ...” Mr. Deering’s words chased Virginia down the stairs, and she crossed the fingers of both hands, her eyes fixed on the front door. By the time she noticed Theo’s arm snaking through the banisters it was too late to avoid him, and in the effort to do so she tripped and fell down the last three stairs. As she tumbled she bumped her nose on something, and a stringy trail of blood spewed over the wall and floor.

  She scrambled to her feet and clamped her hand over her nose. The front door appeared to be bobbing about from side to side, and there was a sound like rushing water in her ears. She sat down, perching on the bottom stair with her head between her knees, and listened to her own ragged breathing. It sounded as if she was crying, but she knew she wasn’t—at least not in the way Theo would call girlish. When Theo came and stood in front of her, and the others began crawling out from underneath tables and hatstands, she glared at them. Blood was still dripping through her fingers and onto the floor, but she made no attempt to stanch it. There was a kind of satisfaction in letting it come.

  “You idiot!” Theo whispered, ashen-faced. “You prize idiot! You’ve got blood all over the place!”

  He spat on a handkerchief and began to dab—then scrub—at the long red streak on the wall, but that just made it spread, and took the shine off the wallpaper. The other boys stood about exchanging sheepish glances and biting their lips. Mrs. Bellamy started up the stairs from the basement kitchen, crying, “What’s going on? What’s happened?” The playroom door crashed open and heavy footsteps thundered along the landing. Virginia got up and pushed her body across the hall.

  “What on earth ... ?” she heard as she tumbled outside, but then the door shut, and all the shouts and murmurs stopped as though a switch had been thrown. She found her feet and careered out of the driveway, stopping to lean against the churchyard wall and close her eyes for a moment. The wind rested on her forehead like a cool hand, and she wished she could stay with it forever and never have to think again.

  “Virginia Wrathmell?”

  Her eyes snapped open with thoughts of Mr. Deering, even though it wasn’t his voice. It was Mrs. Hill, emerging from the main street. The knife grinder had gone. She stood in front of Virginia, her expression more curious than sympathetic, and addressed her for the very first time since their rift. Trust Mrs. Hill to be brought around by a bloodied nose.

  “What in heaven’s name has happened to you, child?”

  Virginia accepted Mrs. Hill’s hanky without answering the question.

  “That man you were talking to—”

  “You’ll need to moisten it a bit first. Here, let me
do it. What man?”

  “The man with the tricycle. The knife grinder ...”

  Mrs. Hill spat into the handkerchief and began polishing Virginia’s chin and lips.

  “Ira Rosenthal? What’s he got to do with the price of eggs?”

  The handkerchief was black with blood, but Mrs. Hill spat on it again and began working around Virginia’s nostrils. “You remember Mr. Rosenthal, don’t you?” she went on. “He was interned on the Isle of Man a year or so back, on account of his being a German—do you really not remember? They let him out again a few months later.” She stopped to inspect the hanky, in search of a clean patch. “Anyway. Poor old Mr. Rosenthal is neither here nor there. What I would very much like to know—”

  But Virginia broke away and began her stumbling run toward the lane. Something hideous began pushing up through her insides—a noise of some kind, an obscenity—that frightened her, and she pressed it down again as hard as she could. She tried crying instead, but that was no good, and her sobs emerged dry and inauthentic. The pounding of her head started to keep time with the pounding of her feet—and what with that and the exaggerated rasping of her own breath, she couldn’t hear a thing outside herself. Mrs. Hill’s indignation blew away, unheeded, like a feather on the wind.

  Virginia didn’t know what she wanted, other than to go home. Or perhaps it was just that everything she wanted was a paradox. She wanted Jozef to tell her the whole truth, and she wanted him to say everything was fine. That he’d lied without being a liar, that he was an enemy airman but not a villain, that he’d emerged from the marsh wearing Clem’s coat but hadn’t left Clem behind.

  Virginia stopped for breath once, when she was halfway home, turning her face toward the marsh and the strong, wet wind. She didn’t look back, so she didn’t see the black car that stopped when she stopped, and edged forward into the lane as soon as she began to run again.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 2015

  Sophie lets her mother walk to the car and slide back into the passenger seat before emerging from the house. Even then there’s no hysterical rushing into the night; she just stands in the doorway with the grubby hall light behind her and drums her fingers on the cover of the book.

  The Deerings might easily drive off without observing their daughter, but they don’t. It’s the father who spots her as he’s reaching sideways to release the hand brake. Virginia sees the reflection of his eyes in the rearview mirror and, after a few moments of absolute stillness, the motion of his jaw as he speaks a few cryptic words to his wife.

  Mrs. Deering gets out of the car again and returns to the house. She’s long and lean, and Virginia retreats toward the stairs, her shoulders rising. She thinks about switching the light off, but it’s too late now; she’ll draw attention to herself. She wishes she were Silver, sitting by the hall table inside the tidy circle of his own tail, cleaning his paws, watching without being watched.

  Something explosive is bound to happen now. It’s inevitable. There’ll be wails and recriminations; bone-crushing hugs; laughter and tears; declarations of love and remorse. The mother will shake her daughter by the shoulders like a rag doll and thank God she’s alive. That’s what it’s like when you find something you feared you’d lost forever. Virginia has meditated on reunions a lot, in her time, and thinks she’s something of an expert on the subject. She knows the thoughts that have been spinning around Mrs. Deering’s head ever since this morning, when she discovered Sophie’s bed empty and the sheets all smooth and cold. She knows the darkness behind those thoughts; the patient horror that promises to be there still, when there are no more thoughts to think.

  “So,” says Mrs. Deering, stopping in front of her daughter with her arms calmly folded. They share the same facial structure—the same strong nose and cheekbones—but the ins and outs are more exaggerated in the older woman. Her face is like a totem chiseled from wood.

  Sophie stares back without a word and hugs the fairy-tale book to her chest, almost her mother’s equal when it comes to self-possession. Her rings catch the taillights of the car and make her fingers flash like red stars.

  “Well,” Mrs. Deering continues. “Your father was right. He said we’d find you here.” She speaks in a husky accent, which clashes with her sangfroid. What is it? Spanish? Something like that. Something full of vigor and heat and flavor. She zips her coat right up to her chin, and when it’s as high as it will go she pulls the fur collar up around her ears, as if to demonstrate how much she objects to this weather—and to being out in it.

  “How?” Sophie wonders. “How did he guess?”

  “Oh, by knowing you so much better than I do.” On the last couple of words something cracks inside Mrs. Deering’s voice, and in the same instant she notices Virginia. She’s startled but manages a smile.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Deering approaches Virginia with her left hand placed lightly over her heart. “I don’t know how to apologize enough for all this; I don’t know where to start.” She holds her right hand out, for shaking. “I’m Adriana. I’m Sophie’s mother.”

  Whatever it was—that tiny warning crack—has been filled in, sanded, and smoothed away. Virginia takes Adriana’s hand, and the feel of it makes her think of wood that’s been polished till it shines like silk. After all, she reassures herself, things could be worse: wood is not a bad substance; not entirely without warmth or give. She’d rather Sophie’s mother were made of wood than, say, stone or metal. She stares at the woman’s hand and realizes she’s letting her thoughts spiral when she ought to be saying something. She runs her dry tongue over her lips, but the fact is, she’s forgotten how to make conversation.

  “Has Sophie been with you all day?”

  Virginia stiffens, still feeling for the woman’s tone. Is this a straight question or an accusation? The car engine cuts out and the ensuing silence is heavy. Blue police lights start spinning through her mind and she imagines New Year’s Eve in a cell, with a Styrofoam cup of tea and no view of the marsh.

  “I kept telling her to contact you,” Virginia insists. It’s true, up to a point. “I couldn’t get hold of anyone myself; my phone isn’t working.”

  Mrs. Deering encloses Virginia’s featherweight hand in both her own. “Bless you,” she whispers. What with all that padded goose-down and fur edging, it’s warm inside her hands. Virginia allows herself to rest a moment in the simple pleasure of it before her conscience gets the better of her and she pulls away.

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “What?”

  “Bless me.”

  Adriana beams with compassion—the type of compassion that people reserve for querulous babies and crazy old ladies. Virginia could say almost anything—for much of the day I’ve imagined myself capable of sinking your daughter in the marsh—and Mrs. Deering’s expression would stay much the same.

  “Bless you for letting Sophie shelter in your home, on such a day. Just to think ...” A shudder runs the length of Adriana’s body, and her glance flickers to the open doorway behind Virginia. “I don’t know what possessed her. She didn’t even take a proper coat.”

  “Dad?” Sophie is moving off into the darkness, step by careful step. The driver’s door is hanging open and Mr. Deering is no longer inside the car. It’s a while before Virginia spots him, standing by the harbor wall with his back to the house, and even then she’s not entirely sure. She can make out the very vaguest shape of a man, but if she didn’t know the landscape so well she could believe it was a boulder or a stumpy tree or a fluctuation of the light.

  Adriana sighs. “I honestly don’t know how to begin thanking you, Miss ... Mrs... . ?”

  Perhaps civility is not Mr. Deering’s thing; perhaps he thinks it’s a feminine virtue. His wife is certainly good at it, though Virginia rather wishes she’d stop now. She foresees flowers arriving in a few days’ time: a seasonal poinsettia, perhaps, or some blood-red amaryllises, with a little card purporting to be “from Sophie.” She pictures the delivery
man walking around the house, knocking and peering through windows. He’ll have to leave it on the doorstep, eventually, where the wind will pick it to bits.

  “I’m worried you’ll catch cold, standing about in this weather,” Adriana persists. She doesn’t seem remotely worried by Virginia’s reluctance to speak—thank goodness.

  Sophie stops a few feet away from her father, as if she’s afraid to go any closer. Virginia’s eyes follow, adjusting slowly to the dark. Now she can see that Mr. Deering’s head is bowed, and that he’s leaning on the wall with both hands, as if he were trying to topple the entire age-old structure.

  “He’s not throwing up?” Adriana mutters, under her breath. “Oh, please God. Whenever I so much as put the heating on in that car ...”

  Mr. Deering’s shoulders are, in fact, heaving, but not because he’s being sick. When Adriana realizes he’s weeping she says, “Oh,” and turns away. She taps out a quick rhythm on the ground with the toe of her boot, and frowns.

  “Dad?” Sophie’s plea is tentative. “Daddy?”

  He doesn’t respond, but then he probably hasn’t heard, because the wind snatches the words straight from her mouth and carries them off in the opposite direction. Sophie closes in on him slowly, step by tiny step, holding out her hand as if he were a dog with an uncertain temper. She’s left her denim jacket in the kitchen and her white shirt flutters, wraithlike, in the wind.

  When she touches him, his arms seem to melt so that he can’t lean on them anymore. It’s not just his arms either, it’s his neck and legs and spine. He’s losing his solidity—dwindling to an invisible core—and the thing that’s holding him together is Sophie herself. The wind rattles the upstairs windows, like a ghost dragging a chain, and whatever they say to one another—if they say anything at all—is lost in the din. Sophie wraps her father in her arms, and he wraps her in his, and the darkness seems to tumble around them like water.

  “Sophie is very close to her father,” says Adriana, apologetically.