Virginia finds Clem’s obituary in the top drawer of his desk, the one from the local newspaper that she defaced as a child. Strange that it’s been lying here all these years; stranger still to think of Lorna cutting it out and keeping it, ink-stained gash and all.
They used a nice photograph, she’ll give them that. In fact, it’s the same as the one on the dust jacket of his last bird book, where he’s standing by the flint wall in jacket and tie, his hair tufting up in the wind. Underneath the photograph they’d printed Clement Gordon John Wrathmell, 5th April 1895 to ?31st December 1940? but eleven-year-old Vi had taken it upon herself to erase the second date, giving the two question marks on either side a chance to speak for themselves. She remembers doing it, scribbling so hard over the offending words that she ripped a hole in the paper and broke the nib of her fountain pen.
Virginia puts the obituary in her dressing-gown pocket, alongside the wedding photo, and shuts the desk drawer. There are five more drawers full of tobacco-scented relics, and she’s got half a mind to carry on exploring. Half a mind. Yes, exactly. That’s what’s annoying her. The other half of her mind is obsessing about Sophie. It’s impossible to concentrate with another person in the house, even when that person is asleep. Twenty minutes ago she heard a squeaking noise and clumped all the way downstairs to find out what it was, only to glimpse Silver streaking along the baseboard with a mouse dangling from his jaws.
Virginia taps her stick impatiently, wondering what to do. The whole point of coming upstairs was to pull away from the girl; from the new magnetic center of the house. The more distance there was between them, she’d calculated, the less distraction there’d be. It sounds silly now.
Virginia stumps to the top of the stairs and peers down at the closed kitchen door. There’s not a sound, except for the wind, and Silver has disappeared with his catch. Why can’t she just imagine she’s alone? She, who’s been living off imagination and little else for eighty-six years? She’s surely capable of pretending that the house is empty?
It’s because this day is different; that’s the problem. That’s what it all boils down to. Ever since last night, when she found the curlew’s skull on the doorstep, she’s known that this day, more than any other day of her entire life, possesses meaning and weight. Accidental things will not—cannot—happen to Virginia Wrathmell on New Year’s Eve 2015. If a half-familiar girl rolls up in the Salt Winds kitchen on this day of all days, it’s because she’s been sent by Fate, or the Dead, or the Past, or whatever it is that stared back at her, last night, from the bird’s hollowed eyes.
Who are you, Sophie? What have you come here for? Spit it out, girl; there’s not much time. Virginia curls her claws around the banister and thinks about going downstairs—again—and shaking the child awake. But she’s lived long enough, and has read enough stories, to know that Fate and the Dead and the Past won’t give straight answers to straight questions. She’ll have to be patient. Besides, she can’t face staggering down those blasted stairs for the second time in half an hour.
There’s a wooden chest on the landing where spare blankets and pillows are stored. Virginia sits down on the lid to rest her hurting bones and enjoy a proper cough. Her chest is bad this winter, worse than in previous years; every time she wakes up, it’s as though her lungs have shrunk overnight, and there’s a little less room for breathing. It’s a shame the whisky bottle is downstairs, because she could do with another draft of that liquid smoke. She could do with a bite to eat as well; her head feels light.
The church clock hasn’t struck for a while, or at any rate she hasn’t heard it, and she wonders what time it is. The morning’s getting on, and there’s still so much to do. All those boxes and drawers to look through; all those notebooks and letters and photos; all those rooms. There won’t be time for them all. Not now.
Virginia strokes her palm over the lid of the chest. It’s a dark, tomb-sized Victorian monstrosity, and it fits nicely at this end of the landing, against the banisters. This is its proper place. This is where it stood before Clem was born, and this is where it stood throughout his life. Virginia remembers him on his last day, sitting on the lid while he talked to her and laced his walking boots.
It was Lorna who moved the chest, of course, in the spring of ’42. She shifted it in front of the attic door, even though it looked all wrong there, and they both bashed their shins on it whenever they walked past. Not that Virginia argued at the time; she wouldn’t have dared. She just waited, and after Lorna’s death Joe helped her move it down the landing again, back here, to its rightful place. Joe never questioned the ins and outs of these maneuvers; he just did as he was told. He was good like that.
And now Virginia’s got herself thinking about the attic again. She sighs heavily and looks down the landing toward the hidden door. The velvet curtain is still swaying in a draft. It was moss green when Lorna hung it, but now it’s the color of dust.
It’s seventy-four years to the day since Virginia last went through that door and up the winding stairs to the top of the house. She knows she must face it again before tonight, but she’s not sure she’s ready. For years and years she’s pictured herself in the twilight of her last day, climbing up to the attic, the rest of the house already shut up and in darkness. She’d sit on the broken settee for a while, closing her eyes while the ghosts gathered, and then she’d go. Flashlight in hand, straight downstairs, from the attic to the marsh in a simple, swooping trajectory. Yes, that has been the plan, but now the girl is here. She’s forced to consider Sophie.
The attic is cold and dark. That’s the first thing. In her mind’s eye the attic is hot and golden, with a sun-shaped window in the east-facing gable, and needles of light piercing the roof slates here and there. But decades of polluted rain and spiders’ webs have dulled the round window, and the only thing that penetrates the roof is the drip-drip of water.
Virginia walks on bird droppings to reach the window. The wood feels spongy under her feet—no wonder, when you start counting the number of missing slates—and she ponders how long it will be before it caves in and the rain falls straight through to the bedrooms, and Salt Winds really starts to die. Because Joe won’t try to rescue the place; he knows how Lorna felt about it. Perhaps he’ll sell up.
She unlatches the window and tries to pull it open, but the mechanism has warped and corroded over the years and she’s too weak to shift it. Not to worry. There won’t be much of a view over the marsh today, even from up here, not with the weather like this. That’s what she tells herself, but she continues to stand and stare at the opaque glass.
When at last she turns around, she finds herself face-to-face with the old rocking chair. Rain or mice, or both, have nibbled away at the wicker seat, and its legs are speckled with mold, but it’s still in position—of course it is, why wouldn’t it be?—and Clem’s binoculars are hanging off the back, cobweb-gray and dilapidated. She touches the rocker with her foot and it moves as smoothly as it ever did, rumbling over the floorboards. Clem’s shotgun is there too, a few feet from the chair, its muzzle fuzzy with dust. And there’s the wireless, and the typewriter under its canvas cover; and there’s a dried-up bottle of printer’s ink with Samphire Green on the label, though all that’s left is a gray crust where the lid ought to be. And there, right by her left slipper, despite all Lorna’s desperate scrubbing, is the stain.
It’s bigger than Virginia remembered, as though it’s been spreading all these years instead of drying as it should. She touches the edge of it with her slipper. It’s big and spattery and black, and if she didn’t know it was blood, she wouldn’t guess. She’d think someone had hurled a bottle of ink across the room and shattered it on the floor. Virginia has to remind herself that none of this is really unexpected.
All the same, she should have allowed herself longer to prepare; should have waited until this evening. To come up here on a sudden whim, after seventy-four years ... She looks for somewhere to sit, but there’s nowhere. The trestle tables are all folded away and she couldn’t use the rocking chair, even if the seat were still intact. As for the settee, it was on its last legs back then, in the early forties, and now it’s just a mound of wet sponge and rusted springs. And she can hardly bring herself to look at the mattress. It used to be yellowy white, but now it’s brownish black and there are mushrooms growing out of the stuffing. She shivers. The whole attic smells of fungus and droppings and rain. It smells of darkness.
Lorna was conscious of this attic, moldering away above the rest of the house, year in, year out. Virginia managed to pretend it wasn’t there and made an uneasy peace with the place, but Lorna never did. Sometimes she used to threaten to sell Salt Winds and move them away for good, and she meant it—though she never did it.
Virginia is shivering persistently now. She’s had enough already, and steels herself for the descent, but then she stops and the hairs on her neck rise like hackles. Salt Winds is creaking—somewhere nearby, beside her, below her—and this time it isn’t the cat, or the weather. It’s the sound of feet on aching boards. Light, stealthy, human feet, making their way up from the ground floor and along the landing.
She had not thought to shut the door behind her. Or even pull the curtain across. The feet pause at the foot of the attic stairs and a small voice calls, “Hello?”