A Half Forgotten Song (13 page)

“Keeps the nasties out,” she whispered, and looked past him as though something had caught her eye. Zach glanced over his shoulder. In the hall mirror, his reflection glanced back at him.

“The nasties?”

“The ones you don’t want.” She stood up, then paused and looked down at him. “Good long arms,” she murmured. “Come on and help with it.”

Obediently, Zach rose and followed her into the sitting room. Under Dimity’s direction, he ducked into the inglenook fireplace and stood up cautiously, noting as he did that the morning had taken a strange turn. His shoulders brushed the sooty stone on either side, and when he looked up, a shower of smuts sifted into his eyes. Cursing, he rubbed at them, only to find that his fingers were gritty, too. The sharp stink of ash filled his nostrils, and up above his head the sky was a small, dazzling square.
How did I come to be in a chimney?
he wondered, with a bemused smile for the dark space around him.

“Feel up above your head—as far as you can. There’s a nail there for it. Can you find it?” Dimity called from the sitting room. Looking down, Zach could see her feet in their ugly leather boots, shuffling anxiously to and fro. He reached up and felt about with his fingers, loosening more soot that pattered down into his hair. He tried to shake it off and kept searching until his fingers brushed against the sharp spike of a rusty nail.

“I’ve got it!”

“Take this then—take it.” Her arm reached into the flue and handed him the heart pincushion, hanging it from his finger with a loop in the thread that she’d stitched it with. “Hang it on the nail, but as you do you have to sing part of the song.”

“What song?” Zach asked, carefully lifting the heart so that it wouldn’t touch him. The flue narrowed at his head height, though, and it brushed against his cheek. A cold touch of metal that left a thin scratch. He shuddered. “What song?” he repeated, rattled.

“Bless this house, keep it whole . . .” The line was sung in a quavering voice, thin and high.

“Bless this house,” Zach echoed tunelessly. He hung the thing on the nail and a sudden updraft carried his words away like smoke. A rush of air that whispered angrily in his ears. He got out of the inglenook as fast as he could, and stood there brushing pointlessly at his hair and clothes with filthy hands. When he looked up at Dimity, her hands were clasped in front of her mouth, the fingers meshed tightly together, and her eyes were bright. With a quiet, joyous sound she threw her arms around Zach, who could only stand in silent amazement.

When she let go and stepped away, she seemed embarrassed, and looked down at her stained fingers as they fiddled with a loose thread on her apron. It didn’t seem to bother her that her hands were covered in blood. As if she was used to it. Zach rubbed his own filthy palms together again.

“Could I use your bathroom to get cleaned up a bit?” he said. Dimity nodded, still without looking at him, and pointed out to the hallway.

“Through the door to the back,” she said quietly. Zach went out past the stairs and pulled open the door, which was swollen and stiff. He had a sudden idea of the wooden skeleton of the house being bloated with damp and brittle with age. Experimentally, he gouged his thumbnail into one of the thick beams wriggling through the wall. It was as hard as iron.

Through the door was a tiny utility area, the back door of the cottage, and the door to the bathroom. The ceiling was close enough to brush Zach’s hair, sloping away from the back wall of the house. The temperature dropped noticeably, and Zach realized that the bathroom had just been tacked on hastily—a flimsy lean-to, no doubt thrown together to replace an old garden privy. He peered out through the glass in the outer door. The backyard was shaded and bare of plants. Just trampled, mossy earth and cracked paving slabs slimed with green algae. A variety of old sheds and outbuildings stood here and there, with their doors shut tight, secretive. One of them was indeed a chicken coop, where six brown hens were pecking and preening. Beyond the yard the trees that marked the edge of the ravine heaved their branches in the wind. Zach scrubbed his hands as best he could in the tiny bathroom basin, and tried to forget the way the updraft in the chimney had sounded, for a second, like a voice.

Dimity was making tea, humming contentedly as she set out cups and saucers. No chipped mugs this time, Zach noted. He had come up in the world. She ushered him through to sit in the living room, as pleased and adamant as a child playing house. In the end, the cup she passed him had no handle, but she obviously hadn’t noticed, so he didn’t mention it. A smile hovered around her mouth, waxing and waning as hidden thoughts came and went. Now seemed to be as good a time as any for a confession, Zach thought.

“Miss Hatcher—”

“Oh, do call me Dimity. I can’t be doing with all the Miss Hatcher this and Miss Hatcher that!” she said gaily.

“Dimity,” he said. “I, uh, I met your neighbor, Hannah Brock. She seems nice.”

“Nice, yes. Hannah’s a good girl. A good neighbor. I’ve known her since she was a baby, you know. That family . . . that family have always been good folk. Keep themselves to themselves, mind. Been at Southern Farm a full century, the Brocks have, as far as I know. How frightened she is of losing it! Poor girl. Always working so hard, and getting nothing back for it. Almost like a curse on the place but that can’t be right. No, I can’t think who’d have done that . . .” She trailed off, staring into the distance and seeming to consider who might have set a curse on the farm.

“I think I met her . . . husband, too. I went down to buy some eggs yesterday. A dark-haired man?”

“Her husband? Oh, no. Couldn’t have been. Her husband’s dead. Dead and gone to the bottom of the sea.” She shook her head sadly. “So many of them down there. My own father, too.”

“He drowned? She’s a widow?” Zach asked.

“A widow, yes. These past seven years or so. Drowned, gone, lost at sea. I never liked him, mind you. He was too clever for his own good. Thought he was, anyway. No understanding of the land. But honest and of good heart for all that, I suppose.” She looked around the room quickly, as if expecting the man’s vengeful ghost to have heard her malign him. Zach tried to shape Hannah into the role of widow in his head. It was a poor fit. Widows were old and tearful, or else brassy and rich.

“I was married, you know. We got a divorce. Well, in truth, she left me. Ali. I have a daughter, called Elise. She’s six now. Would you like to see a picture?” Dimity gave a vague nod, looking puzzled, so Zach persevered and handed her the picture from his wallet. Elise grinning, holding a cloud of cotton candy bigger than her head. She’d been so excited she couldn’t keep a straight face. Then afterwards the sugar gave her a headache, and she was vile to everyone and ruined the day. But in the picture her eyes were bright and her hair was shiny, and she radiated the simple joy of being in possession of something wonderful to eat.

“Is she happy, your little girl? Is her mother kind to her?” asked Dimity, and Zach was shocked to see that her face had fallen into lines of sadness, and her voice had grown hoarse.

“Yes, Ali’s always been great with her. She adores Elise.”

“And you?”

“I adore her too. She’s a very adorable girl. I try to be a good dad, but I suppose that’s something that time will tell.”

“Why did your wife leave you?”

“She fell out of love with me. I guess that happened first; and then, after that she could suddenly see all the many ways in which I was lacking.”

“You don’t seem that bad to me.”

“Ali has . . . high standards, I suppose. Now she’s met somebody who matches up to them better than I ever could.” Zach smiled briefly. “It’s funny—you know what people say about first impressions? I think that’s what our problem was. Mine and Ali’s. We met at an exhibition of twentieth-century drawings—an exhibition that I had curated. I was able to tell her at great length what made each piece so great; what made the artists so great. I suppose I came across as deeply insightful, passionate . . . high-minded, successful, and going places. I think it was all downhill from there, as far as Ali was concerned.”

Dimity seemed to consider this for a while.

“People’s hearts . . . other people’s hearts seem to fill with love and empty again, like the tide filling the bay. I’ve never understood it. Mine has never changed. It filled, and it stayed full. Stays full even now . . . even now,” she said fiercely.

“Well, mine did too, for a long time after she left. It felt like the world was ending.” Zach smiled sadly. “Suddenly there didn’t seem a lot of point to anything I did, or was trying to do. You know?”

“Yes. Yes I do.” Dimity nodded intently. Zach shrugged.

“But gradually, it’s . . . faded, I suppose. There’s only so long you can spend wishing things were different. Wishing you were different. Then you have to move on.”

“And have you now?”

“Moved on? I’m not sure. I’m trying to, but it’s easier said than done, I suppose. But that’s kind of why I’m here . . . in Blacknowle. I’ve been meaning to tell you, actually—I’m writing a book, about Charles Aubrey.” Dimity looked up when he said this, her eyes widening fearfully. “I don’t . . . I won’t put anything in it that you don’t want me to, I promise. I just want to write the truth about him . . .”

“The truth? The truth? What do you mean?” Dimity struggled out of her chair and stood in front of him, shifting her weight. She suddenly looked very afraid.

“No—please. Look. I don’t want to intrude on your memories of him. Really. And even if we talk and you tell me things you remember, but you don’t want me to write them down or record them, I won’t, I promise,” he said intently.

“What’s the use of it, then? What do you want from me?” she said.

Zach considered his answer carefully. “I just . . . I just want to
know
him. Nobody really seems to know him. Only the public figure, the things everybody saw. But you
knew
him, Dimity. Knew and loved him. Even if I don’t write down anything specific that you tell me, you can still help me to get to know him. Please. You can tell me about the Charles you knew.” In the pause after he spoke, Dimity twisted the ends of her hair and then sat down again.

“I knew him better than anybody,” she said at last.

“Yes,” Zach said, relieved.

“Can I see that picture? The one you held up to the window before?” She colored up as though she’d been in the wrong on that occasion, ignoring him while he behaved so rudely outside. Zach grinned.

“I’m sorry about that. I was so keen to speak to you I forgot my manners. Here it is. It belongs to a collector who lives up in Newcastle, but he loaned it to a gallery for this exhibition.” He dug out the magazine and passed it to her. She stared at it intently, ran her fingers over the glossy paper, and sighed slightly.

“Delphine,” she whispered.

“You remember her?” Zach asked, and Dimity shot him a withering glance. “Right, sorry.”

“She was such a lovely girl. She was my first friend. First proper friend, that is. They were such town mice, when they first arrived! Not used to getting her shoes muddy. But she changed. She wanted to be a bit like me, I suppose—a bit wild. She wanted to learn how to cook and how to gather from the hedgerows. And I suppose I wanted to be more like her—she was so friendly, so easy to talk to. So much loved by her family. And she knew so much! I thought her the wisest person I knew. Even later, when she went up off to boarding school, and she got more interested in fashion and boys, and going to the flicks . . . she was still my good friend. She wrote to me sometimes, during the winters when they weren’t here. Told me all about this teacher or that boy, or this row she’d had with some other girl . . . I did miss her, afterwards. I did miss her.”

“Afterwards? Do you know what happened to Delphine? She sort of vanishes from the public eye—not that she was ever really in it. Aubrey was very protective of his family. But after he was killed in the war, no mention is ever made of her again in any of the books . . .” Zach paused at the look on Dimity’s face. Her eyes were focused on things he couldn’t see, and her mouth made tiny movements, as though there were words inside not strong enough to come out. She looked for a moment as though she could see terrible, terrible things.

“Dimity? Do you know what happened to her?” Zach pressed gently.

“Delphine . . . she . . . No,” she said at last. “No, I don’t know.” Her voice was unsteady, but when she blinked and looked back at the magazine, a tiny smile lit her face once more. Zach had the strongest feeling that she was lying.

“May I?” He took the magazine from her and flicked forward a few pages, to the first picture of Dennis that had surfaced for sale, about six years ago. “What about this one? The date would suggest that the drawing was done here in Blacknowle. Did you ever know this man, Dennis? Do you remember him at all?” He passed the magazine back to the old woman. She took it, but reluctantly, and barely glanced at the picture. Two spots of color appeared in her cheeks, and a mottling started to rise, staining her neck. A blush of guilt, or anger, or shame . . . Zach couldn’t tell. She took a quick, shallow breath, and then another.

“No,” she said again, sharply, holding the magazine away from her as if she couldn’t bear to look. Her breathing stayed high and fast in her chest, clearly audible, and her fingers shook slightly as she flicked back to the picture of her and Delphine. “No, I never knew him.”

Careful not to put her off talking at all, Zach let her return to the earlier picture without asking any more questions about Dennis, or the fate of Delphine. He realized he was every bit as keen to know about Delphine, the girl he had spent so long trying to know from her portrait, as he was about her father, but he saw that it would have to wait, and be tackled gently. For now he was happy to sit and listen as Dimity talked about the first time she met the Aubrey family, and the house they took for the summer in 1937, and how she was careful to keep her acquaintance with them hidden from her mother for as long as she could.

“You think your mother would have disapproved of them? I know that some people in the village thought the setup was far too liberal . . .” he said, and then wished he hadn’t. Dimity scowled at the interruption, and sat silent for some moments as she seemed to digest his words, which were obviously wrong in some way. In the end she ignored the question and carried on with her tale.