Call of the Curlew Read online

  Virginia nodded eagerly and, as if by agreement, they stopped walking and stared into the wind. She already knew that he made his living by writing books about wildlife. It had surprised her, when she first found out, because Clem didn’t look like a writer; he looked too sturdy and weathered, as if he spent all his days outside. Of the two Wrathmells, it was Lorna who came across as the rarefied, indoorsy one, and on one occasion Virginia had plucked up the courage to ask whether she was a writer too. The three of them had been sitting round in the visitors’ room at Sinclair House, and Lorna had smiled at the question, but before she could answer Clem had said, ‘I think Lorna’s got enough on her plate, looking after me. Wouldn’t you say so?’

  ‘Is this the marsh?’ Virginia asked, indicating the darkening vastness with a nod. ‘When you say “Tollbury Marsh”, d’you mean all of this?’

  ‘Indeed I do, and Tollbury Marsh is good for birds but bad news for people, so you must promise me that you’ll not set foot on it. Never ever. You understand?’

  Clem made her look at him. The upper half of his face was hidden by the shadow of his trilby hat, but she could see how his jaw had set and she nodded quickly. The follow-on question (Why not?) died on her lips.

  Clem stuck his free hand in his pocket after that and walked with his head down, like someone absorbed by private anxieties. Virginia worried she’d done something to make him cross and trotted to keep up with him, her gaze fixed on the trilby hat, and before very long she tripped on a raised stone and banged her knee. Clem noticed straight away, even though he was well ahead and she hadn’t cried out. Her skin was grazed and, worse, the navy coat had picked up a smear of mud, but she managed not to blub and Clem seemed himself again as he helped her up. He spat on a handkerchief and dabbed at the broken skin.

  ‘Piggy-back?’ he suggested, and she wrapped her arms timidly round his neck and shuffled on to his back. He hitched her up and they were off, much faster now, the gas mask bouncing against her hip. She laid her head gingerly against his neck, and watched the world through the space between his hat and his collar. They were closing on the grey square now, and she could see that it was indeed the front of a house, with long windows and tall chimneys. There wasn’t so much as a chink of light, and the only proof that the place wasn’t boarded up and abandoned was the smell of woodsmoke that grew stronger the nearer they came. Virginia stared up at the gaunt windows, searching each one for a sign of life, but there were only reflections of the evening sky, or the backs of curtains.

  She closed her eyes and let her head loll on Clem’s shoulder. The drone of the wind and the rhythmic swing of his steps made a kind of lullaby. As cold and tired as she was, she didn’t want their walk to end.

  ‘Lorna won’t be cross, will she?’ Virginia was careful to speak softly, so close to his ear.

  ‘What? About the coat?’ His words vibrated against her cheek, from somewhere deep inside his chest. ‘She’ll have me to deal with if she is. Anyway, I’m sure she won’t be. It’s only a bit of mud.’

  Salt Winds. Virginia raised her head in time to read the name of her new home, carved in a stone gatepost. The lane petered out after that. There was a semi-circle of dusty grass, with room for a car to turn, and then the house.

  Clem flicked the hall light on and eased Virginia off his back. She blinked and swayed in the brightness as Clem set her suitcase down and tossed his keys into a bowl. It felt warm and muted inside the house, and there was a strong smell of cabbage and gravy. As soon as she could see well enough, Virginia searched for the mark on her coat and began to scrape at it, furtively, with her thumbnail.

  Someone was tearing about on the floor above them, slamming drawers and making the floorboards squeak underfoot. A terrier came bounding and yapping down the stairs, wagging its stump of a tail, and a woman’s voice shouted after it, ‘Bracken!’

  Clem took his hat off and called up the stairs, in much the same tone of voice, ‘Lorna!’ He ignored the dog, though it was racing round his feet and worrying his shoelaces.

  ‘Clem? I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m sorry.’ There was a final flurry of sound and a pause, as if she’d stopped to gather herself, and then Lorna was coming towards them down the stairs.

  ‘Virginia,’ she smiled, her hands outstretched in a gesture of welcome. ‘How wonderful to have you here, at last!’

  She wore an emerald-green dress with a narrow belt and a necklace of pearls, and she made the stairs and hallway, and even the dog, look drab. Virginia had met Lorna several times at Sinclair House, so she was familiar with that oval face; with the creamy skin and the pencil-thin eyebrows and the plump mouth. She hadn’t seen the yellow hair before, though, or not properly, because Lorna had always kept her hat and coat on when they were sitting in the visitors’ room or walking about the orphanage grounds. It was the only part of her that didn’t seem quite in control. Despite her obvious efforts to keep it combed and lotioned and pinned, curly strands kept flying loose all over, and she kept trying to poke them into submission.

  ‘Welcome, welcome!’ Lorna held Virginia at arm’s length, her hands trembling ever so slightly. She surveyed the child with a fixed smile and planted a perfumed kiss on her cheek.

  Virginia’s voice had jammed in her throat, and she didn’t dare return the kiss, for fear of marring the powdery perfection that was Lorna’s face. She cobbled together an awkward, blushing gesture instead, something between a bow and a curtsey, which made Lorna laugh uneasily.

  ‘You must be hungry as a hunter!’ she said. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’

  Clem was on one knee, trying to extract his shoelace from the jaws of the ecstatic terrier. ‘How long?’ he demanded, frowning up at his wife. ‘The poor child’s walked her legs off on the strength of a sandwich lunch; she needs a quick supper and straight to bed.’

  Lorna’s hostess smile barely wavered. ‘It’ll only be five minutes; ten at most. Mrs Hill made a splendid rabbit pie this morning, while I was doing the beds. It’s in the oven now, and coming along very nicely.’ She turned back to Virginia and bent down, so that their faces were level. ‘We usually eat in the kitchen, but I’ve laid in the dining room today, as it’s a special occasion. D’you want to come and see? I’ve put a white tablecloth out, and the silver cutlery, and it couldn’t look smarter if we were expecting the king to dinner.’

  There was nowhere for Virginia to look, other than her new mother’s expectant face. She felt the tears rising at the back of her eyes, and contorted her lips into odd shapes, in a futile effort to stop them falling. It was impossible to explain how she much she feared the sumptuous dining room; impossible to confess she wasn’t hungry.

  ‘I got a mark on my new coat,’ she faltered, as the first drops slid down her face. It was the only sensible-sounding apology she could think of. Bracken chose this moment to notice her, and busied over to inspect her ankle socks.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Lorna studied the offending patch of coat and brushed it with the back of her hand. ‘Well, not to worry, it’s only a bit of mud. There’s surely no call for tears?’

  Clem came up behind Virginia and shuffled the coat off her shoulders. ‘Told you she wouldn’t be cross,’ he murmured in her ear. Virginia slipped her mittens off, and Clem popped them in the coat pockets, one on either side.

  ‘But of course I wouldn’t be cross!’ Lorna exclaimed, her smile hardening. ‘Goodness, I’m not a dragon, am I?’

  Lorna was so patently un-dragonlike that it seemed pointless to say so, but perhaps someone should have bothered to state the obvious because the ensuing silence felt heavy. A tear dropped off Virginia’s chin and splashed on the dog’s nose. It gave a shrill bark and jumped up at her, like a jack-in-the-box.

  ‘Oh Bracken, give it a rest,’ said Clem, touching the dog’s belly with the toe of his shoe. Bracken snarled and pounced, cat-like, on his master’s foot. Virginia smiled at that, and sniffed, so Clem teased it all the more, moving his foot round the wheeling terrier, always with
one eye on the child’s tear-stained face.

  All at once Bracken stopped chasing and began to bark in earnest.

  ‘Stop it!’ Lorna swooped on the dog, smacking it hard across the nose. Clem winced. When Lorna hoisted the animal into her arms, its back legs scrabbled and pulled threads from her dress, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Virginia shuffled closer to Clem until she was half hidden by his arm, and Lorna glanced at the pair of them, a blush rising up her neck. ‘I’ll check on the pie,’ she muttered, stalking off with the wriggling terrier still in her arms. Clem ruffled Virginia’s hair. ‘I’d better go and offer my services to the chef,’ he whispered.

  First he showed her into the dining room, where a snow-white cloth was laid, as promised, for three. A wood fire crackled in the grate and the silence was like velvet, except for the occasional clatter from the kitchen. ‘Have a seat, Vi,’ said Clem. ‘Give those poor old feet a rest.’ He hovered in the doorway for a moment, as if reluctant to leave, and she managed to smile at him over her shoulder.

  After he’d gone she stood by the fire for a moment, with her back to the warmth. The dining chairs were made of dark wood with tapestried seats, and she had to tense both arms in order to pull one out. At first she was content to sit on her hands and watch the firelight dance on the cut-glass water jug, but after a while she picked up her knife, in order to find out if it was as heavy as it looked. It was even heavier, so she tested her fork, and her crystal glass, and after that she slid the silver ring off her linen napkin, and rested it on her flat palm.

  Salt Winds was a large house; she hadn’t expected that. It was large enough to be a small-scale orphanage, if someone wanted it to be, although it would have to be stripped and sterilised first. The ivy-patterned wallpaper would have to be painted over, and the threadbare carpets replaced with linoleum. The greenish curtains would have to be mothballed, and replaced with safety bars. There would be no more leather-bound books on the shelves, no glass-fronted cabinets, no china shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. She twisted round in her chair, perversely pleased by her snap calculations. Some of those age-dulled oil portraits might stay on the walls, but the framed photographs – the family weddings, the men with dogs and guns, the sepia babies in sailor suits – would have to go.

  She jumped when the door squeaked, but it was only Bracken nosing his way in. He padded across the carpet, ignoring her proffered hand and friendly cluckings, and slumped down in front of the fire. The voices in the kitchen were a muddle of sound. A tap gushed, and when it stopped she caught the end of Clem’s question.

  ‘… that the two of you enjoyed your little tête-à-tête in my absence?’

  Virginia barely recognised his voice, it was so stony and hard.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Lorna hissed. ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth. He came cruising by when we were walking from the bus, and said he gathered we were taking delivery today. Well, who told him, if not you? He even gave me a little lecture on satisfying women’s “needs”. He being the great expert on such matters, of course.’

  ‘I’m sure he did no such thing,’ said Lorna tightly. ‘Mind out of the way, this is hot.’ Her voice moved to a different part of the kitchen. ‘If you must know, we met by chance in the queue at the post office. He asked after you, and naturally I told him you’d gone to fetch Virginia. What’s wrong with that? She’s not some unmentionable secret, is she?’

  Clem sighed and there was a long silence between them.

  ‘No, of course she’s not.’

  An oven door slammed shut. Three china plates were fetched from a rack and stacked angrily, one by one.

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t offer you a lift,’ Lorna observed.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But you walked?’

  ‘I wanted to. It was our daughter’s first view of Salt Winds, Lorna; I’d pictured it so often in my head.’

  ‘You made Virginia walk all the way up the lane, when Max could have driven here in five minutes flat?’

  ‘I’d rather not be beholden.’

  ‘Beholden? Oh, for God’s sake—’ Lorna’s voice stopped abruptly. There were scuffling noises and fierce whispers, and the sound of someone trying not to cry out. Then there was silence.

  Bracken raised his head from his paws and cocked his ears. Virginia held tight to the sides of her chair and fixed her gaze on the water jug. The cut glass made a miniature world, so beautiful and complex that if you stared at it for long enough you could lose your way among its flickering mirrors and slivers of light.

  ‘Bed?’ Lorna suggested, scraping the pie remains from Virginia’s plate. It was by no means the first time she’d spoken during dinner – she’d asked Virginia whether she had a favourite book and she’d told her about Mrs Hill, who bicycled up four days a week to ‘do’ the house – but it was the first thing she’d said with any conviction.

  ‘Good idea,’ Clem agreed, poking about in the scraps for a morsel of rabbit, and holding it out for Bracken. Virginia had been afraid they’d insist on her leaving a clean plate, but they didn’t; they couldn’t, in all fairness, when Lorna herself had scarcely managed a mouthful. Clem sighed contentedly and the chair creaked when he pressed against its back; he was the only one to have done justice to Mrs Hill’s pie (‘though you wouldn’t say no to a proper slice, would you, you daft dog?’). Lorna reached for her husband’s plate while Bracken finished licking his hand, and she watched as he wiped his slobbery fingers on a napkin.

  Virginia leaned down and patted the terrier’s head as Lorna piled the dirty plates and glasses on to a tray. ‘I think we’ll let you off washing-up duties, this once,’ she smiled, her fist full of greasy knives and forks, and Virginia felt wrong-footed because it hadn’t occurred to her to offer.

  ‘Switch the wireless on, would you, Vi?’ said Clem, once Lorna had gone. He nodded at the box on the sideboard. ‘Left-hand dial.’

  Virginia had never seen a wireless close-up before, let alone touched one. She turned the left-hand dial gently, with the very tips of her fingers, anxious not to leave prints on the polished wood. The machine whistled and hummed and suddenly there was dance-band music all over the dining room. When she turned round, half laughing, Clem was fishing through his pockets, a pipe gripped between his teeth.

  ‘Bet you’ve never filled a pipe before?’ he said, placing a leather pouch and a box of matches on the tablecloth.

  ‘No, and she’s not about to.’ They both looked round. Lorna was watching them from the doorway. ‘Virginia? Bed.’

  It was strange, climbing up the carpeted stairs behind Lorna; like a dream that goes on and on. Their shoes made no sound, the music faded, the wind was nothing but a murmur. There was even something hushed about the way Lorna walked, with a silky rustle and a languid sway of the hips. She went ahead, carrying the suitcase, and Virginia was surprised by the way its weight seemed to drag on her arm, because there was barely anything in it. A few scraps of clothing. A New Testament. A ‘Best Wishes’ card ‘from all at Sinclair House’.

  Downstairs, the music gave way to the clipped voice of a BBC man.

  ‘Mrs Wrathmell?’ said Virginia, at the top of the stairs. ‘Clem won’t have to go and fight, will he?’

  Lorna led the way down the dimly lit landing. ‘No,’ she replied, with a faint snort. ‘Not unless they raise the conscription age.’

  ‘What about Mr Deering?’ Virginia wasn’t sure what had provoked her to ask, but she wished, straight away, that she hadn’t. She wanted to say and do all the right things so that Lorna would stop looking so tired and uncertain.

  Lorna turned her head, her expression illegible in the poor light. ‘Mr Deering? What makes you ask about him?’

  They stopped outside a door halfway along the landing and Virginia shrugged at her shoes. ‘I don’t know.’

  They stood face to face, momentarily stuck, unable to address the awkwardness of Virginia’s qu
estion and unable to leave it be. Downstairs, the noise of the wireless expanded as the dining-room door opened, and terrier paws pattered across the hall floor. The front door opened, and they could hear Clem blowing on his hands and shifting from foot to foot while he waited for the dog to wee. A chill draught invaded the house, smelling of tobacco smoke and rain.

  Lorna shivered. ‘Come on. Come and see your room,’ she said, opening the door and switching on the light. She set the suitcase down at the end of the bed and led the way round, her face flickering with animation as she smoothed imaginary creases from the baby-pink bedspread and adjusted a stem of yellow jasmine in a jar. ‘I had so much fun getting it all ready.’ She smiled at the memory, as if it were an old one.

  It was a big room: newly papered, newly curtained, newly furnished. Virginia followed Lorna from bed to chair to wardrobe, trying to take it all in; trying to find the right thing to say. She stopped at the dressing-table mirror and stared at herself in the unfamiliar light: a whey-faced thing with messy pigtails; eyes hooded with exhaustion. Words failed her.

  Lorna picked up a knitted doll from the pillow and flicked at its woolly plaits. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘You’re probably too old for pink, aren’t you? And dolls.’ She tossed the doll back on to the bed and took a cigarette from her pocket.

  ‘No!’ Virginia protested inadequately, squeezing her hands together. She couldn’t remember what her feelings were for the colour pink, if she had any at all.

  Lorna put the cigarette back in her pocket and went to the window, where she pulled the curtain aside and stared into the black night. Her face lost all its clarity in reflection; the light and the wavy glass made it seem broken and hollow-eyed. It made her look even younger than she was. There had been girls at Sinclair House with the same gawky configuration of bones, the same haunted stare.

  ‘Mrs Wrathmell,’ Virginia began, gathering up her shoulders in a deep breath. ‘Thank you very much for having me. I’m sorry I didn’t say it properly when I arrived. I like the room very much. I like pink.’