A Half Forgotten Song (18 page)

She fell into a kind of trance as the sun came around to the side of them, creeping slowly, silently, until it lit Charles’s right eye and made the iris flare with bright browns and golden tones. Like a jewel of some kind, or a precious metal. Behind him the sea was a silvery blur, and the short turf she was sitting on was soft and springy; the sky was a vast dome of chalky blue studded with gulls like the daisies on a lawn. Dimity’s fingers went still, stopped plucking, because she didn’t want the world to turn anymore, or time to move on from that exact moment. Warm and still, with Charles’s topaz eyes fixed upon her, and Delphine digging her little vegetable patch behind her, and Celeste cooking with Élodie—something that she could just about smell on the air, drifting towards them. Something savory and delicious, something she would be asked to share.

But she wasn’t, in the end. Celeste came out with a piece of pie wrapped up in tough brown paper, wearing one of her long dresses again, a pale cream color with long, swinging sleeves, belted in at the waist with a plaited cord. She smiled her wide, lovely smile at Dimity, then ruined everything.

“Time for you to go home now, Mitzy.” She walked around behind Charles, let her hand rub his shoulder and stay to rest there. Dimity blinked.

“Am . . . am I not to stay for supper then?” she asked. Charles put up a hand to rub his eyes, as if he, too, were waking from a dream. How perfect it had been, Dimity thought sadly. How perfect.

“Well, we leave for London tomorrow, so I think tonight we shall be just family, the four of us. On our last night.” Celeste’s smile faded as chagrin bloomed across Dimity’s face.

“You’re leaving . . . tomorrow?” she said.
Just family.
“But I don’t want you to,” she said, the words coming out louder and wilder than she’d intended. She took a deep breath, and it hurt her chest.

“Well, we must. The girls must go back to school soon. Delphine! Come and say good-bye to Mitzy!” Celeste called to her elder daughter, who stood up, wiped her hands on the seat of her slacks, and came over to them. Stiffly, Dimity struggled to her feet. She was breathing quickly, and for the first time in weeks, she didn’t know how to behave with them. She couldn’t look up; kept her eyes fixed on the grass and saw that it was peppered with rabbit shit.

“Can’t she stay for dinner? It is the last night, after all,” said Delphine, squinting up at her mother.

“Because it is the last night, I’m afraid not. Say good-bye now,” said Celeste. Charles handed Dimity the coins that made up her sitter’s fee for Valentina, and brushed his knuckles lightly against her shoulder.

“Thank you, Mitzy,” he said, smiling softly. Celeste pressed the packet of pie into her hands, and Dimity felt the warmth of it through the paper. She felt like throwing it back at her. Throwing the money at Charles, throwing a curse at Delphine. Something was building up inside her, gathering strength. She didn’t know what it was, except that she didn’t trust it, so even as Delphine was talking, she turned on her heel and fled.

Dimity stayed out very late, sitting in the thick hedgerow that enclosed the track to The Watch as the blackbirds’ resonant song gradually petered out, and the sun buried itself behind the swell of the land. An invisible fist had clenched itself around her throat, and there was a stone in her gut. A stone of dread, at the thought of waking up the next morning and knowing that they were gone. She hadn’t even asked if they would be back the next year; hadn’t dared to ask, in case the answer was no. Having them there, having their company, even petulant Élodie, had made everything else more bearable. She cried for a long time, because being left behind felt a little like being laughed at in the schoolroom; like having stones thrown; like waiting in the dark for someone to notice her. A little like all of those things, but worse. Eventually she got up, walked down to the front door, and let herself in. She had the pie and the plucked pigeons to placate Valentina, not to mention the shillings, and the scolding she got was a routine one. Valentina even took her by the shoulders afterwards, fingers digging in, and ran narrowed eyes over her daughter.

“You’ve feathers in your hair, little dicky bird,” she said, patting Dimity’s cheek in what was as close as she ever came to a display of affection. Somehow this only made things worse, and Dimity went off to find a comb with tears hot and blurry in her eyes once more.

Z
ach woke up the morning after his boozy lunch to thoughts of Hannah; of her quick, impulsive face and the way it had closed off when he’d asked about the noises upstairs at The Watch. He drank two cups of coffee in quick succession and decided to take her up on the offer of a tour of the farm. On a whim, he picked up his bag of art supplies on his way out. However pleased he’d been to buy them, he’d remained reluctant, as yet, to use them. It had rained hard in the night, hard enough to wake him with the sound of it fretting at the windowpane. Zach’s shoes were soon filthy, as he walked inland for a while instead of heading directly towards Southern Farm. The cool breeze felt good on his face and in his lungs, clearing his head and making his limbs feel lighter.

He climbed a steep hill to the copse at its summit. There he turned, and was welcomed by a wide, sweeping view of the coast as it rolled for miles in either direction. A blurred patchwork of green and yellow and gray, sharply delineated by the contrasting color of the sea. Below him, Blacknowle was toy houses; The Watch a white speck; Southern Farm invisible behind a dip in the land. He perched on the leathery trunk of a fallen beech and took out his sketchpad.
Just draw a line. Just start
. Drawing had once emptied his mind for him, cleared out all the things clamoring for his attention and let him see a way ahead. Reassured by his own talent, in this thing that he was able to do. At Goldsmiths, his tutors had always urged him to draw and paint more; to be true to his abilities rather than rebel against them. At the time, he’d been too caught up in appearances to heed their advice.

Zach drew a line; the horizon. He stopped. How could he have got it wrong? The horizon was a line—a straight one; bright with light, immobile. The line he had drawn was straight, gentle. And yet it was wrong. He stared at it, trying to work out why, and eventually decided that he had put it too high up the page. The picture would be unbalanced—there should be an even split between land and water and sky; a pleasing trio, layered one after the other with satisfying natural rhythm, and by putting the horizon where he had, he’d cramped the sky, robbed it of all sense of space and volume. With one single pencil line, he had ruined the drawing. Shutting his sketchbook in disgust, Zach set off for Southern Farm.

Hannah was in one of the fields near the lane, climbing out of her jeep and opening up the tailgate. A small flock of cappuccino-colored sheep puttered at her heels, clearly eager for whatever she was bringing them. They all had thin, ridged horns curling back from their heads, which clattered together as they crowded in. Zach waved, and with a high sweep of her arm Hannah beckoned him in, so he climbed the gate and went over to her, dodging piles of fresh sheep shit. She was lifting slices of hay out of the jeep and strewing it into wire mangers. On the backseat of the jeep, a gray-and-white border collie was watching the flock, ears pricked and eyes alight.

“Good morning. Is now a good time for that tour you promised me?” he said, as he reached her.

“Sure. Just let me get this lot fed, and I’m all yours.” Hannah gave him a quick, appraising glance that made him feel slightly conspicuous; an odd, long-absent flutter of nerves. Then she grinned at him.

“How was your head this morning?” she asked.

“Rotten, thanks to you,” he said.

“Not my fault. How could I have forced you to drink if you didn’t want to? I’m just a tiny little woman,” she said archly.

“Somehow I doubt you’ve ever had much trouble getting people to do what you want them to.”

“Well, depends on the person. And on what I want them to do,” she said, shrugging slightly.

There was a pause as she went back to the jeep for more hay.

“I thought sheep only needed hay in the winter?” said Zach.

“Then, too. But there’s not much grass left for them at this time of year, and these ladies will be lambing soon, so they need plenty of sustenance.” There was hay in Hannah’s hair, and all over her sweater. Tight gray jeans, smudged with grime.

“I thought lambs came in spring.”

“They usually do, unless you give the ewes hormones to shift their cycle. But these girls are Portlands. An old, rare breed—they can lamb pretty much whenever you like. That way you can get organic lamb ready for spring, when people bizarrely expect to see brand-new lambs out gamboling in fields full of buttercups and also to have six-month-old lamb ready for their Easter roast at the same time,” she said. Zach helped her right one of the mangers, which had gotten knocked over onto its side. It left mud and sheep manure on his hands.

“Yuck,” he said absently, holding his fingers splayed in front of him and trying to think where he could wipe them. Hannah glanced at him and grinned.

“You’re a real man of the land, aren’t you?” she said. “Bet you don’t notice when your hands are covered in paint.”

“Paint doesn’t come out of a sheep’s arse,” Zach pointed out.

“Oh, it’s only half-digested grass. There are far worse chemicals in paint. Here, use this.” She handed him a twist of hay from the back of the jeep, and he wiped his hands on it gratefully. “Come on, hop in. I’ll rush you to some hot water and soap.” They climbed into the car and she knocked it into gear, pulling away with a slither and spin of mud from the wheels. “So it begins. Season of mud and cold water,” she muttered. “I hate winter.”

“It’s still only September.”

“I know. But it’s all downhill from here.”

“So the farm’s organic, is it?” said Zach.

“It is. It will be, if I can ever get through the testing and certification process.”

“Long-winded?”

“Unbelievable. Everything has to be organic and proven and tested—from the veterinary treatment they get, to the hay, to the way I treat the hides after slaughter. It costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds every year to keep it up—just to be a member of the right organizations, and have the right checks done at the right times. But come the spring, there should be lamb in the chiller, ready to send out; fully tanned sheepskins ready to sell; and a website where you can actually order things, rather than just look at nice pictures of Portland sheep.” She paused, hopping out of the jeep to shut a gate behind them. They crossed a chalk track, the smooth surface of it sliding like glue after the rain. “Either that or I’ll have gone bust and be living in a trailer in a junk yard somewhere,” she said with forced jollity.

“So why bother with the whole organic thing? Why not just grow a load of sheep as cheaply as you can?”

“Because it doesn’t work. That’s what my father did, all his life. But however cheaply I can raise a sheep, the price I’d have to sell it at would be too low to make a living. I haven’t got enough land to raise a huge flock. And I haven’t got enough help to run things on such a scale. The only chance to keep the place running is to specialize. Do something different, get a name for excellence in one particular thing.”

“Organic Portland lamb?”

“Exactly. And not just spring lamb, old-season lamb—and the mutton is excellent, too. Very lean, full of flavor. And the fleeces from the shearlings are softer than a baby’s bum. But . . .” She tipped her head to one side, and in spite of the airy way she spoke, there was anxiety around her eyes.

“But?”

“I have to survive the winter, until this first crop of lambs are old enough to slaughter. And I have to get the bloody organic certificate in place, like yesterday.”

“So you’re right at the beginning of this whole venture, really.”

“Either the beginning or the end, depending on how optimistic I happen to be feeling that day,” she said, with a quick smile. “Toby and I tried to work the old flock—we tried for five years to scrape by with it. I sold the last of them the year he died. Then it took me a while to work out what the hell I was doing.”

“But you’ve figured it out now, by the sounds of it.”

“Well, Ilir came along. Not much use having a man about the place when there was no livestock and nothing to do but watch the place crumble. He kind of gave me the boot up the behind that I needed.”

“Yes. Important for a man to be useful,” Zach said quietly, feeling a flare of pointless hostility towards the blameless Ilir.

The jeep bounced and slithered up the track onto the concrete yard, and this time Zach was quick enough to get out to open and close the gate before Hannah could. She roared the engine to a halt outside the farmhouse and opened the front door for him with a heave of her shoulder and a kick to the bottom edge of it.

“The cloakroom’s the first door on the right. And if you say one word about my housekeeping I’ll knock you down, just see if I don’t,” she said. The inside of the farmhouse was filthy. Not just untidy, not just in need of vacuuming. Properly filthy. Zach picked his way over mounds of discarded rags, bits of rope and baling twine, wisps of straw, empty milk bottles, and odd implements the function of which he couldn’t begin to guess. There was a plastic dog bed that had been chewed into a strange, stippled sculpture; the blanket inside gray with accumulated hair. A log pile against one wall had shed a wide halo of sawdust and bark and dead woodlice all over the floor, and when Zach looked up in horror, the high ceiling was strung about with blackened cobwebs like some kind of macabre bunting. The basin in the cloakroom had the cracked, half-dissolved remains of several bars of soap slumped around the taps, but the water was hot and he managed to scrape some soap from the heap with his fingernails. He washed his hands quickly, then glanced along the corridor to the next room.

The kitchen—every bit as ripe with sheep and dog as the inside of the jeep had been. A tabby cat was asleep on the range cooker; every surface was covered in plates, pans, and packaging. A bottle of milk had been left out by the kettle, and a housefly was feasting on the yellow crust around its lip. A vast oak refectory table was piled high with accounts, printouts, ledgers, and old newspapers. Zach looked at the dirty crockery for a while, and only moments later realized what he was looking for, and what he was indeed seeing: pairs of things. Two wineglasses with purple stains at the bottom, two coffee mugs, two plates with the bones of what might have been pork chops on them. Evidence that Ilir shared the house with Hannah. There was a sudden bang and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs at the far end of the room. Zach’s pulse gave a lurch and he turned on his heel, dodging back along the corridor as fast as he could, and out into the yard.