The Orphan of Salt Winds

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

  I was very close to mine. Virginia tries to utter it aloud, conversationally, but her voice gurgles in her throat and comes out as a cough.

  “He’s good at this whole parenting thing,” Adriana goes on. She probably thinks she’s talking to herself by now. “A bit bossy at times, but good. I mean, the two of them argue—God, do they argue—but in the end ...”

  Her voice peters out and the two women stand in silence, united by their own private defeats. They watch from the doorstep as Sophie and her father hold tight to one another and sway from side to side in desperate exhaustion.

  Virginia would know him anywhere. Adriana tells her his name is Phil, or Fred, or something like that, but as he approaches the house all she can think is Max. He must be a good ten years older than his grandfather was in 1941, and he’s almost completely bald, but there’s hair on his face, and it’s been carefully trimmed to form two broad stripes—one across his upper lip, the other down his chin. He’s the same height and build as Max, with the same pale hands, and the same glint of a signet ring on his little finger. Virginia tightens her grip on the walking stick and plunges her right hand deep in her dressing-gown pocket, in case he offers to shake it. (He doesn’t.)

  They nod at one another watchfully. “Virginia Wrathmell,” he states, and she feels wrong-footed by the baldness of his tone. What does he mean? Is he asking her if that’s her name? Or telling her he already knows?

  Even his swollen eyelids remind her of Max, and the evening after Juliet was killed when he drank himself stupid on Clem’s whisky. This Mr. Deering has had a bad day too, and it shows. He’s transparent in a way his wife could never be: to look at him, you’d think Sophie had been gone a week, or a month. His eyes and nose are red. His shirt is patched with sweat, and the buttons aren’t done correctly. Even the sculpted beard, when you study it more closely, risks losing itself in a rash of black stubble.

  “I knew your grandfather,” says Virginia carefully. “And your father.”

  When Mr. Deering licks his lips you can tell, by the tacky sound, that his mouth is dry.

  “Yes,” he replies. “Yes. I know.”

  The silence swells with unspoken—unspeakable—knowledge. Virginia ponders the darkness beyond the wall and shivers.

  “Well,” she concludes. “I’m glad you found your daughter safe and well.” They’re just words; they fill a gap. As to whether she really means them, she can worry about that later.

  “Thank you.” Mr. Deering holds Virginia’s gaze a moment or two longer than before and nods once.

  Virginia remembers the denim jacket and goes back indoors to fetch it. Mr. Deering keeps jangling his keys and saying, “Well ...” as if he’s keen to get going, so she doesn’t feel obliged to invite them inside. Adriana looks like she could do with a drop of whisky, and it might not do him any harm either—but best not. The kitchen is well and truly closed for business now. All the mugs and glasses are clean and neat, and so they shall stay until Joe wraps them up in newspaper and takes them down to the charity shop.

  Virginia unhooks the blue jacket from the back of the chair and brushes it down, as if it’d had time to gather dust. Sophie has followed her into the kitchen, and she takes it from Virginia’s hands with a smile before shrugging it on over her arms. That done, there’s nothing to keep her, but she lingers for a minute over Silver, crouching down to rub his chin every which way, and making little sing-song farewells.

  “I’m sorry you never got to show me your walk,” Sophie says, glancing up at Virginia. Silver is on his back now with his eyes half-closed—shameless creature—while she strokes his downy stomach. “Maybe I could come back and see you in February, at half-term break? Would that be all right? We could do it properly then, in the daylight, and you could tell me more about Lorna, and your life and everything.”

  Virginia makes a mumbling sound, which may or may not imply assent.

  “Look after that book,” she says, to change the subject. She likes the careful way Sophie holds the volume, as if she’s frightened of dropping it.

  “Oh, I absolutely will. And I won’t forget what you told me.”

  “What?”

  “About my great-grandfather being a bit ... you know ... control-freaky.”

  Virginia smiles slightly at the choice of words, which prompts Sophie to hug her. Sophie probably flings her arms around everyone she meets—people have a tendency to do that these days—so it’s silly to be moved by the gesture. Virginia returns the embrace robotically, as if she’s not quite sure how to go about it. The child feels so fine and delicate—so crushable—inside the circle of her arms that she’s afraid of squeezing too hard. She’s reminded of the curlew’s skull as it sat on the palm of her hand last night, quivering in the air, as light as an empty eggshell.

  Virginia decides not to wave the Deerings off. It’s not as though anybody’s expecting it: Adriana keeps telling her to get indoors out of the wind, and he (Phil? Fred? Frank?) hasn’t made eye contact since the one halting exchange.

  She hobbles upstairs, thinking she’ll sit for a minute with the curlew’s skull; give them time to get going before she locks up the house and leaves. They’re so noisy, though—even from her bedroom she can hear them slamming the trunk, calling at one another through the wind, bleeping about with their phones—and they prevent her thoughts from sinking below the surface. In the end, she picks up the curlew’s skull and crosses the landing to the spare bedroom.

  The black car is almost invisible in the darkness, but just as she reaches the window and looks down someone opens one of its doors, and a golden light floods the interior. Virginia is startled by the charm of it: the car looks like a magical box filled to the brim and spilling over with sorcerous warmth. Sophie climbs wearily into the back seat; Virginia hopes they’ll let her sleep on the way home and leave their questions till morning. Adriana pockets her phone, catches the keys from her husband, and climbs into the driver’s seat. Mr. Deering takes one last, furtive look at the house, but he doesn’t linger.

  The kindly light disappears when he shuts his door, and the occupants are lost from view. Sophie is safe, and the sheer relief of it seems to have hollowed the old woman out. She watches the car move off and disappear down the lane, and when it’s quite gone she brings the curlew’s skull level with her face. She hardly dares look it in the eye.

  “Bereft,” she observes. “Bereft of our revenge.”

  In this light, with the spare room in darkness and the landing muted, the skull has adopted yet another expression. Just the twist of an edge here, and the wrinkle of a shadow there, and Virginia could swear the bird has a sense of humor.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE 1941

  Even though she’d raced till her lungs were raw, stopping once to catch her breath, Virginia didn’t rush to the attic the moment she got home. All the way along the lane she’d been firing imaginary questions at Jozef, but her anger seemed to dissipate as the front door swung to behind her—or at least it started to lose its fire and turn into something colder and harder.

  She stood panting in the quiet hallway, her eyes streaming and the blood crusting on her nose. Her shoes were hurting—they’d been on the small side for a while now—so she kicked them off without bothering to undo the buckles. Perhaps this was what it felt like to come home and discover you’d been bombed? All the solid pieces of your life turned to charcoal; your treasures blasted to rubble; the hidden parts of your house ripped open and bared. Virginia turned on the spot, and her breath hung in the air like smoke. To think she’d been stumbling around this place for a whole year, without seeing it for what it was.

  Of course Lorna knew everything, she realized, as she went through to the kitchen and splashed her face at the sink. That hadn’t occurred to her until now, but as soon as it had, it was obvious. Lorna knew what Jozef was; she’d known all along, and encouraged Virginia’s idiotic belief in Mr. Rosenthal.

  She cupped her hands under the cold tap and sucked water into her mouth, re
membering how she’d felt in January and the things she’d said: Oh, please can we keep him? ... We don’t have to send him away, do we? ... Clem likes Mr. Rosenthal. The tap water tasted metallic, and when she spat it out, the sides of the sink got spattered with red droplets.

  Bracken whined in his sleep and Virginia turned to look at him, pink water dripping from her chin. When she felt sad, she often knelt beside his basket and fondled his ears—not because he’d ever come around to liking her much, but because he was warm and alive and his loyalties would lie with Clem. This afternoon she could hardly bear the sight of him. He looked more like a gargoyle than a dog, lying on his back like that, with his top lip hanging open and all his teeth exposed.

  Virginia rubbed her upper arms, but there was no getting warm today. She glanced at the clock and thought back to the same time last year, when Lorna was helping out at the Women’s Institute and Clem had been gone a few minutes, and Salt Winds was still its old, wholesome self. The range had been hot; the pantry stocked; the sitting-room fire laid. They’d been on the brink of atrophy, and they hadn’t had a clue. How had they not known? She ran her fingers through her hair and screwed her eyes shut as she wandered back into the hall. How had she not known? Why hadn’t she stopped it all from happening?

  It wasn’t even two o’clock, but the hall had grown darker since she arrived. When she ran her thumb along the underside of the banister, she felt the fluff gather like cotton candy on the soft pad of her skin. Her hand flopped to her side again, and she didn’t bother to look at it or wipe it clean. Sightless, she stood at the bottom of the stairs. There seemed no point in going up. In going anywhere. In doing anything.

  It was the sound of the wireless that roused her—at least, she thought it was the wireless, though it wasn’t coming from the dining room. It was a zinging, crackling beat—barely audible—which wound through the moaning of the wind and the silence of the house, and refused to let her attention dissolve.

  The more she listened, the more it seemed to Virginia to resemble band music, with swooping trombones and dancing drums: the sort of stuff that used to make Clem mutter, with a trace of self-mockery, about how old he felt. They—Lorna and the German—must have taken the wireless up to the attic so that they could have it on while they worked. That’s what must have happened; that’s where it was coming from.

  Virginia followed the music up the stairs, like a thread through a maze, and up again to the attic. The music was distinct now, but not loud: she could hear their voices beneath it, and their stifled laughter. Despite her resentment, all of a sudden she felt shy, and she hesitated for a long time before nudging open the door and peering in through the gap.

  The gas fire was on high, its hisses and sputters undercutting the rise and fall of the big band music, but the heat wasn’t radiating from there. Or not just from there, anyway. It seemed to pour out of everything: the walls and floorboards; the ochre trestle tables; the flattened Tate & Lyle box across the window; the velvety shadows in the rafters; the prints that hung over the room and fluttered in midair. Even their naked bodies seemed luminous with warmth, as if Jozef and Lorna were gods from Mount Olympus, and not ordinary people who suffered from chapped skin, and didn’t get enough vitamins, and spent all day wrapped in itchy woolens.

  When Virginia saw them lying like that on the mattress, their bare arms and legs woven in a loose braid, her first instinct was to run, or at least to look away, but she didn’t. Her second instinct—the instinct to freeze—was stronger. Was this it, then? Was this Sex? Or the prelude, or the aftermath? Whatever it was, it was unbearable; it made her insides lurch—and at the same time she wanted, desperately, to watch.

  Lorna was lying across Jozef’s chest, and he was sitting with his head propped up on a pillow, tracing dreamy shapes down her side and over her bare breast. They’d just finished laughing about something, and the humor lingered in the shape of their lips and the lines at their eyes.

  It wasn’t just their nakedness that shocked Virginia; it was the ease with which they shared it, as if their bodies were every bit as nice as clothes—nicer, even; more comfortable to move about in; pleasanter to the touch. There were plenty of blankets, but they were all messed up at the foot of the mattress and concealed very little from view. Jozef was bending his head and kissing Lorna on the lips. He did it with a strange thoroughness, as if there was a message in it, or an answer to something Lorna had said—though she hadn’t said anything—and not only did she let him do it, she twisted around and propped herself up on her elbows, so as to take the pressure of his mouth more fully, and return it with greater force.

  They were—what was it they were? Virginia rummaged through the shadowy borderlands of her vocabulary, searching for a word to describe Lorna and Jozef, and what they were doing. The best she could come up with was perverted, but she wasn’t convinced it was right.

  It was very cold at the top of the stairs, and just as the attic’s warmth seemed to pour out of the music and the furniture and the lovers themselves, so the landing’s chill seemed to emanate from Virginia’s own body, as though her blood had turned to seawater and her flesh to ice. She felt like one of those evil queens from fairy tales who walk in winter, and bring the cold with them everywhere they go. If she burst into the attic now, the gas fire would fizzle out and the lovely, rosy light would fade to gray. They’d stop laughing, too. Oh, they’d stop laughing all right, when they clapped eyes on her.

  Virginia squeezed her eyes shut, bowed her head, and thought how much she hated them both. Yes, she did, she hated them. How could she not? Jozef was a German and an adulterer and a liar and a pervert, and for all she knew he’d murdered Clem. Held him facedown in the lapping waters and stripped him of his coat, his house, and his wife. No doubt he’d told Lorna all about it. Maybe—probably—that’s why they were both laughing as Virginia came up the stairs. She curled her hands in on themselves and dug her nails into her palms. She did hate them; she could feel it now, like a creeping flame beneath her skin.

  “Let’s take a trip in a trailer,” sang the impish voices on the wireless. “No need to come back at all ...”

  “We never used to listen to this kind of music,” Lorna remarked, sliding a cigarette between her lips. The attic was already grainy with smoke, and there were a handful of stubs in the ashtray. They must have been saving up their week’s supply for today, when they knew Virginia would be out of the way. No wonder she’d been forced, against her wishes, to go to Theo’s party. They’d had their own party planned.

  “Clem wasn’t keen,” Lorna added, by way of explanation. Jozef rolled onto his front and leaned over her, so that they were touching all the way along their bodies, from their feet to their chests. You couldn’t have got a cigarette paper between them, as Mrs. Hill might have said if she’d been there—assuming the spectacle hadn’t rendered her utterly speechless.

  Lorna stroked his head, winding her fingers in and out of his curly hair. “Yes, we’re leavin’,” she sang along with the band. “Oh we’re hittin’ the road, oh, we’re gettin’ away from it all.” Her voice was soft and not quite in tune, and she managed to make the song sound sad, which it obviously wasn’t meant to be.

  Jozef touched her collarbone with his lips. “When we’re rich and famous ...” he began, moving his head down her breastbone and pausing every few words to deposit a kiss, “... and the war is over ... and we’re far away from Tollbury Point ... I shall buy you a gramophone ... and we’ll fill our house with Tommy Dorsey records.”

  Lorna tried to smile. “Don’t talk like that,” she murmured. “I thought we’d agreed ...”

  Jozef lifted the blanket aside and kissed her on the navel. Lorna’s stomach looked rounder than it used to, and it rose rather oddly from the rest of her body, like a hillock from a plain.

  “Please don’t,” she repeated, as if Jozef was doing something unkind. He kissed her belly again, and she dug her fingers into his hair and stirred it restlessly, as if she couldn’t
decide whether to push him off or force him to stay put.

  The song finished with a brassy clash, and in the moment between its ending and the BBC man speaking there was a loud bang from downstairs. Lorna and Jozef sat up and Virginia leapt backward, before they could spot her.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded like the front door.”

  They flicked the wireless off, and for a few seconds there was nothing but the hiss of the gas fire, and the noise of everyone’s breathing.

  “Maybe it was just Bracken knocking something over ...” Lorna whispered.

  “Or Virginia?”

  “But she’s not due back for ages.”

  There was a flurry, as of clothes being reached for and disentangled, and a sudden hush as Mr. Deering’s voice shouted up from the hall.

  “Lorna? Are you home?”

  One of them turned the gas off, and after that the stillness was complete. Even the wind seemed subdued, as though it had decided to stop fighting the silence and become a part of it instead. Virginia pressed her back against the wall and held her breath.

  Mr. Deering waited for a long time, as if he was listening to the house. He opened a few doors before climbing up the main stairs and pausing on the first-floor landing.

  “Virginia?”

  Once he’d decided Lorna was out, he stopped shouting and his voice began to drip honey.

  “Virginia?”

  When there was no response he began to plead, in a carrying whisper: “Vi? Where are you? We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

  He was coming very close to the foot of the attic stairs now. She could tell precisely where he was by the telltale whining of the floorboards under his shoes: he was passing along the landing and stopping outside her bedroom door. She could hear his breezy knock, and the creak of his knees as he got down to look under her bed, and the clang of hangers as he opened her wardrobe and pushed her clothes aside.