Call of the Curlew Read online

  About the Book

  Virginia Wrathmell has always known she will meet her death on the marsh.

  One snowy New Year’s Eve, when she is eighty-six, a sign arrives that the time has finally come.

  New Year’s Eve, 1939. Virginia is ten, an orphan arriving to meet her new parents at their mysterious house, Salt Winds. Her new home sits on the edge of a vast marsh, a beautiful but dangerous place. War feels far away out here amongst the birds and the shifting sands – until the day a German plane crashes into the marsh. The people at Salt Winds are the only ones to see it.

  What happens next is something Virginia will regret for the next seventy-five years, and which will change the whole course of her life.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  30 December 2015

  December 1939

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  January 1940

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  September 1940

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  December 1940

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  January 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  January 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  May 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  August 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  New Year’s Eve, 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  New Year’s Eve, 1941

  New Year’s Eve, 2015

  Call of the Curlew

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Call of the Curlew

  Elizabeth Brooks

  For Mum and Dad, with love

  30 December 2015

  VIRGINIA WRATHMELL KNOWS she will walk on to the marsh one New Year’s Eve, and meet her end there. She’s known it for years. Through adolescence and adulthood she’s spent the last days of December on edge, waiting for a sign. So when one finally arrives, in her eighty-sixth year, there’s no good reason to feel dismayed.

  The sign is lying on her front doorstep, and she very nearly treads on it as she emerges around ten o’clock for a blast of night air. She feels its friable curve under the sole of her slipper, and hears a tiny crack, but she pulls back before her foot can come down and grind it to unintelligible dust.

  Everything aches when she stoops, but she grunts and clings to her stick and succeeds in scooping it up. Whatever it is, it sits in the hollow of her hand as light as a ball of tissue, and at first the only thing that frightens her is its fragility. She can’t see it, with her back to the hall light, but she holds it tenderly in case it’s something wounded and alive. It doesn’t move, but when she strokes her thumb across its surface there’s a purposeful intricacy to its shape, which makes her think it’s a creature of some kind.

  The wind makes to snatch it away, and Virginia’s fingers form a protective curl. She holds it into the light and sees that it’s a bird’s skull, unfeathered and unfleshed. Virginia knows the marsh birds well – if she had her own children she couldn’t have known them better – and she recognises the curlew by its long and gently curving bill. The recognition is paralysing, and the skull almost falls and breaks on the doorstep. Briefly it occurs to Virginia that a shattered sign would no longer be a sign, but that doesn’t ring true. She can’t unsee what she’s seen.

  Virginia raises her other hand and touches the papery bone, running a gnarly finger round the empty eye sockets. The skull looks like a tiny rapier; a doll’s sword. All these years she’s been wondering what the sign will turn out to be, and she’s come up with the strangest ideas. Words forming on a misted window. An anonymous note. A ghost. She’s never imagined anything as perfect as a curlew’s skull.

  There’s a faint warmth at her back, from the electric heater in the sitting room, but Virginia shuffles down the steps, away from it, and away from the wedge of light. There is a semi-circle of gravel in front of the house, and the stones hurt her soles; it is easier to walk on the grass that grows thick and long against the flint wall. When she reaches the wall, she leans against it, and the edge digs into her waist. She lays her stick along the top and cups the curlew’s skull in both hands.

  Ribbons of white hair flutter across Virginia’s face, and the lapels on her dressing-gown flap. The wind is from the north, gritty with the threat of snow and painful to breathe. She faces the marsh and tries to feel excited; to remember the Decembers past when she’s prayed, in vain, for this very thing. There is nothing to see out there, in the vast blackness, but when she shuts her eyes she imagines she can hear the sucking sands and the boom of distant tides.

  It will be cold out there, on Tollbury Marsh. It will be a cold way to go. These bedroom slippers won’t last long; they’ll be in shreds before she’s walked ten yards, and they’ll get lost in the reeds, and then she’ll be barefoot in the mud. She’ll struggle on, ankle-deep, until the mud turns to sand, and the sea begins to sound on every side, now rushing, now creeping, in predatory circles. She’ll stop and brace herself for the icy slap on her shins and thighs. The tide will rise and race, and by the time it’s level with her waist she’ll have lost her stick, and her footing. She wonders if she’ll shout their names; she’s not sure.

  Of course, she’s thought about it all before, but the cold has never presented itself so vividly. It’s a shame this has to happen on New Year’s Eve, instead of a balmy evening in July, but there’s no point quibbling.

  Virginia runs her hand along the bumpy wall and finds a handful of loose stones, which she pockets. Perhaps she should fetch the torch from the kitchen drawer and look for more stones; after all, if the point is to die, then she’ll be better off weighted down. The prospect of returning to the house, even for a minute, is giddying. It’s a miniature reprieve. Now that she thinks about it, there are other things she’d like to take. There’s Clem and Lorna’s wedding photo, though she’ll have to remove the frame in order to fit it in her pocket with the stones. There’s the book of fairy tales, which will take up all the space in her other pocket. And of course there’s the manuscript, but that will fold up very small, so long as she can persuade herself to crease it. She’ll carry the curlew’s skull in one hand; the other she will need for her stick.

  Virginia has everything worked out, and yet she doesn’t move from the wall. She’s hypnotised by the cold, and the fingers of wind that comb her hair. It’s silly to feel rushed, when she’s waited so long, but she can’t help thinking that if the sign had come earlier in the day she’d have had time to say goodbye to Salt Winds, room by room. She’d have been able to make arrangements for the cat.

  A mile away, at the other end of the lane, the lights of Tollbury Point are pricking like pins through the darkness. It’s only when she glances over in the direction of the village, picturing the fireworks that will flare and flower for 2016, that Virginia remembers the date. Today is the thirtieth of December. Stupid woman – it’s not the thirty-first, after all. New Year’s Eve isn’t till tomorrow.

  She’s been granted twenty-four hours’ grace. Virginia doesn’t know what to do with herself. She closes her eyes and presses the curlew’s skull to her cheek, taking care not to hurt it.

  December 1939

  THE CHILD HELD on to Clem’s hand throughout the bus ride. There were lots of stops and the brakes were jerky, and after an hour she murmured, as if to herself, ‘I feel sick.’ Back at Sinclair House it would have been a risky admission, but Clem didn’t seem cross at all. ‘Nearly there,’ he said, elbowing her as he rummaged in his coat pocket. ‘See if you can’t hold on another ten minutes.’ She nodded as Clem blew the fuzz off a
mint imperial and pressed it into her mitten.

  She was glad of the new mittens when they got off the bus. Clem didn’t wear any gloves, but his hands had the impervious look of old leather, so perhaps they repelled the cold by themselves. Apparently Lorna had knitted the mittens specially for her and they’d bought the coat brand new, last Saturday, from the big department store in town. It was navy blue, with a square collar like a sailor’s, and a bit tight round her shoulders, but thank goodness she hadn’t sicked on it. She shivered with relief as the bus pulled away and Clem said, ‘Warm enough?’ She nodded and he stooped to straighten her scarf, which had got tangled with the strap on her gas-mask box.

  The bus had dropped them by an old church with a tower like a stubby finger pointing at the sky and a sign that said St Dunstan’s, Tollbury Point. The little girl turned round slowly, taking in the bare trees and the whitewashed cottages, and tried to guess which one was her new home. Most of the cottages already had their blackout curtains drawn; one risked an uncurtained window and an open fire, and that one looked the nicest in the raw dusk. But Clem adjusted his hold on her slippery mitten, picked up the suitcase and led her away, down a different road.

  Beyond the village, the silence was immense. At Sinclair House there’d been no such thing as total silence, even when Matron ordered it; there’d been too many children and too many echoes in the tall, bare rooms.

  Clem wasn’t one for talking. When they were trudging down the drive, away from Sinclair House, he’d said, ‘Best do the buttons up on that coat, Virginia,’ and she’d obeyed, but perhaps she should have smiled as well, or made some reply, because he’d not said anything after that; not until the mint imperial. When they were on the bus, and now, as they were walking along the road, she kept trying to scrutinise his face without being noticed. It wasn’t easy; he kept catching her eye and winking.

  There wasn’t much traffic. Clem nodded at a woman on a bicycle and they pressed into the hawthorn hedge as a tractor rattled by with an empty trailer. While they were walking, the afternoon became evening, and when Clem said, ‘Here we are,’ she was puzzled. She thought there must be a tiny house hidden in the hedgerow and she looked for it, warily, all along the verge, but the only thing she saw was a narrow turning on to a pot-holed lane. The lane was bounded by a low wall, and now she knew where the great silence was coming from.

  Virginia stood on tiptoe to see the silence beyond the low wall. What she saw was a silhouette-bird perched miles away, on a tilting wooden post amid horizontal strips of earth, air and water; black and pearl and grey. She saw an emptiness that she could actually taste on her tongue, although it wasn’t the sea. She moistened her chapped lips and gathered herself to ask her first question.

  ‘Clem?’

  But a car was coming towards them on the main road, a sleek, quiet car with dimmed lights. It drew up beside them and Virginia forgot what she’d been going to say.

  ‘Wrathmell? That you?’ The driver had to lean across the empty passenger seat in order to shout through the window. It would have been easier for him if Clem had gone round to the other side of the car, but Clem stayed put at the top of the narrow lane, holding Virginia’s hand. He didn’t even stoop so as to come level with the window.

  ‘Evening, Deering.’

  The driver’s face was white and shiny, like a Cheddar cheese, and it seemed to glow in the twilight.

  ‘I gather you’re taking delivery today?’ he said, indicating Virginia with a nod of his head. ‘Congratulations.’ He ran his tongue over his gums as he looked at her, and when he smiled his teeth gleamed too.

  Clem nodded.

  ‘Marvellous thing for Lorna,’ the man went on. ‘The maternal instinct and all that; mustn’t thwart it.’

  ‘No.’ Clem’s quietness was beginning to sound like parsimony, as if talking was charged at tuppence a word.

  Virginia looked at the murmuring car, with its great curling wheel arches, and longed to touch it, just to see what it felt like. It was shiny black, like a patent-leather shoe.

  ‘Well?’ said the man, looking her over once more. ‘Do I get an introduction to the new Miss Wrathmell, or not?’

  Clem lifted his gaze over the roof of the car and squinted at the sky. ‘Virginia, this is Mr Deering,’ he said. ‘Mr Deering, Virginia.’

  Mr Deering pulled his driving glove off with his teeth and stretched even further across the passenger seat in order to proffer his hand. Clem nudged her gently in the back, so she approached the car and gripped the outstretched fingertips. Mr Deering laughed and said, ‘Honoured, I’m sure,’ and Virginia was surprised by a squeamish desire to remove her mitten and touch his moustache, to see what that felt like. It was the same shiny black as the car, and it didn’t look as if it was made of hair. Perhaps he painted it on every morning, with a thin brush and a little pot of lacquer.

  ‘What age?’ said Mr Deering pleasantly, over her head.

  ‘Vi was ten in August.’

  ‘Ah ha. Same age as Theo. Perhaps a spot of matchmaking is in order? What d’you say, Miss Wrathmell? It’s his birthday party on New Year’s Eve.’

  Virginia stepped back to the verge and Clem reclaimed her hand.

  ‘Next year, perhaps.’

  Virginia thought it a rather awkward refusal, but Mr Deering didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Well,’ he continued smoothly. ‘Hop in, both. Won’t take a minute to run you down to Salt Winds.’

  Clem tightened his hold. ‘Thanks, Deering, but we’ll walk.’

  ‘Bit of a stretch for little legs, isn’t it?’

  Something whistled across the silence – a rising, bubbling echo that repeated again and again – and the men stopped talking in order to listen. Virginia could only think of a piccolo and when Mr Deering murmured, ‘Curlew,’ she wondered what he meant.

  Clem took a quick breath and looked up, as if he’d heard a cautionary whisper in his ear. There was a new resolution in the way he said, ‘Listen, Deering, we should catch up properly, and soon. Perhaps you’ll bring the children to Salt Winds in the New Year, once Vi’s had a chance to find her feet? Afternoon tea, or something?’

  Mr Deering withdrew from the passenger window and sat up properly in his own seat. Virginia could see him in silhouette as he pulled his glove back on, wiggling the fingers until they were straight and tight.

  ‘That would be marvellous, Wrathmell,’ he called. ‘I’ll hold you to it.’ It was difficult to detect the gaiety in Mr Deering’s tone when his smile was invisible. He pushed some pedal, or pulled a lever, and the purring motor roared, drowning out his ‘Cheerio,’ so all they saw was the shadow of a wave. Clem didn’t have a free hand, but he raised the little suitcase in salute as the car disappeared round the bend in the road.

  Virginia shivered. Clem squeezed her hand and led her into the narrow lane. She was pleased Mr Deering had gone, although she wouldn’t have minded a ride in his car because her shoes were pinching and the lane seemed to stretch on for miles, straight as an unrolled ribbon, without let-up. If you followed it for long enough you came, eventually, upon a grey square, which might be a house – but it was a long way away.

  ‘Here,’ said Clem, putting the suitcase down and poking about in his coat pocket. ‘Have another mint to keep you going.’

  This one was a humbug, and it had stuck, over time, to the bottom corner of a paper bag. Clem peeled most of the paper off in tiny, white shreds, and popped it into her mouth.

  ‘D’you want to walk on the wall?’ he said. Virginia responded with the beginnings of a smile, and he helped her clamber up on her hands and knees, both of them careful not to scuff the navy coat, or catch it on bird muck. The top of the wall was wide and undulating, like a stone road, and when she stood tall and looked down on the lane, the top of Clem’s hat was lower than her shoulders.

  They started walking and Virginia glanced at the flatness to her left, where the silence lay. It was too dark to see the silhouette-bird now. The deep, arctic blue of th
e sky was reflected, here and there, in streaks of water, and there was a single star in the sky, but everything else was black. There was a low, cold wind that Virginia hadn’t felt when they were coming from the village, and it numbed the left side of her face as she walked.

  The humbug flooded her mouth with minty saliva as she passed it from cheek to cheek, but it hardly shrank at all so she bit down on it with a loud crack.

  ‘Steady on, old thing,’ said Clem. ‘You’ll have no teeth left.’

  She actually laughed at that: a breathy, stifled sound, which encouraged Clem to go on. ‘Lorna will be put out if you arrive without teeth. I can hear her now: I could swear that girl had teeth when I last saw her.’

  ‘What will you say?’

  ‘I’ll say, “Stop your nagging, woman, she had them all in this morning. I reckon she must have taken them out and left them on the bus.”’

  Virginia was outraged; she could barely speak for laughing. ‘I don’t have false teeth! Look!’ She stopped and bared her teeth in a fierce grimace.

  Clem looked, but before he could say anything the curlew whistled again, sounding its repeated echo across the emptiness, and Virginia forgot about her teeth. She looked left, across the void, and fixed her scarf so that it covered her chin as well as her neck. Her breath dampened the knitted wool, and made it prickle against her lips.

  ‘Clem?’ she said. ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Fire away.’

  Virginia hesitated, because he’d said ‘anything’, and she took him at his word. She saw half a dozen questions lined up like fancy chocolates in a box, and it was hard to choose a favourite. She was tempted by the chance to find out something about Mr Deering, but her nerve failed and instead she plumped for, ‘What’s a curlew?’

  ‘It’s a type of wading bird. There are lots of birds on Tollbury Marsh; they like it here. I can tell you all about them, if you’re interested. All their names, and so on.’

 
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