Read A Half Forgotten Song Online

Authors: Katherine Webb

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BOOK: A Half Forgotten Song
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The third Aubrey picture was always the one he looked at last, so that he could look at it the longest.
Delphine, 1938
. The artist’s daughter, aged thirteen at the time. He had drawn her from the knees upwards, in pencil again, and she stood with her hands clasped in front of her, wearing a blouse with a sailor collar, her curly hair caught back in a ponytail. She was standing three-quarters turned towards the artist, with her shoulders stiff and set, as if she had just been told to stand up straight. It was like a school photograph, posed for uncomfortably; but the trace of a nervous smile played around the girl’s mouth as if she was startled by the attention, and unexpectedly pleased by it. There was sunlight in her eyes and on her hair, and with a few tiny highlights Aubrey had managed to convey the girl’s uncertainty so clearly that she looked ready to break her pose in the next instant, cover her smile with her hand, and turn her face away shyly. She was diffident, unsure of herself, obedient; Zach loved her with a bewildering force that was partly paternal, protective, and partly something more. Her face was still that of a child, but her expression, her eyes, held traces of the woman she would grow into. She was the very embodiment of adolescence, of a promise newly made, spring waiting to blossom. Zach had spent hours staring at her portrait, wishing he could have known her.

It was a valuable drawing, and if he would only be willing to sell it the wolves might have been held from the door for a while. He even knew to whom he could sell it, the very next day if he decided to. Philip Hart, a fellow Aubrey enthusiast. Zach had outbid him for the drawing at a London auction three years ago, and Philip had been to visit it two or three times a year since then, to see if Zach was ready to sell. But Zach never was. He thought he never would be. Hart had offered him seventeen thousand pounds on his last visit, and for the first time ever, Zach had wavered. Lovely as they were, he’d have taken half that amount for the drawings of Celeste or Mitzy, the other remnants of his ever-shrinking Aubrey stock. But he couldn’t bring himself to part with
Delphine
. In other sketches of her—and there weren’t many—she was a bony child, a background figure, overshadowed by the sparkling presence of her sister, Élodie, or by bold Celeste. But in this one sketch she was her own self; alive, and on the cusp of everything that was to come. Whatever that may have been. This was the last surviving picture of her that Aubrey had drawn before his catastrophic decision to go and fight on the Continent during the Second World War.

Zach stood and stared at her now, her beautifully rendered hands with the short, blunt nails; the creases in the ribbon holding back her hair. In the bright light of the gallery, Zach’s reflection stared back from the glass, just as visible as the pencil lines behind it. If he concentrated, he could see both at once—his expression overlaying hers, her eyes looking out of his face. He didn’t like what he saw—suddenly his own absorbed, wistful expression made him look older than his thirty-five years; and just as suddenly, he felt it as well. He hadn’t combed his hair yet and it stood up in tufts, and he badly needed a shave. The shadows under his eyes he could do less about. He’d been sleeping badly for weeks, since he’d found out about Elise.

There was a thumping of footsteps and Elise came bustling down the stairs into the gallery from the flat above, swinging through the door on its handle, her face alight, long strands of brown hair flying out behind her.

“Hey! I’ve told you not to swing on the door like that! You’re too big, Els. You’ll pull it off its hinges,” said Zach, catching her up and lifting her away from the door.

“Yes, Dad,” said Elise, any hint of contrition ruined by a wide grin and the shadow of laughter, creeping up on the words. “Can we have breakfast now? I’m just
so
hungry.”

“Just
so
hungry? Well, that is serious. Okay. Give me one second.”

“One!” Elise shouted, and then clattered down the remaining steps to the main shop floor, where there was enough space to twirl, arms wide, feet threatening to tangle with each other. Zach watched her for a second and felt his throat tighten. She had been with him for four weeks now, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to cope without her. Elise was six years old, sturdy, healthy, vibrant. She had Zach’s exact shade of brown eyes, but hers were bigger and brighter, the whites whiter, the shape of them in a constant state of flux from wide with amazement or outrage to narrow with laughter or sleep. On Elise, the brown eyes were beautiful. She was wearing purple jeans, torn through at the knees, with a lightweight green blouse open over a pink T-shirt on which a photograph of Gemini, her favorite pony from her riding school, was emblazoned. It was a photo Elise had taken herself, and it wasn’t very good. Gemini had raised his nose towards the camera and laid back his ears, and the flash had caused a lurid flare in one of his eyes, so that, to Zach, he looked bad tempered, oddly elongated, and possibly evil to boot. But Elise loved the T-shirt as much as she loved the pony. The outfit was finished with a bright yellow plastic handbag; mismatched clothes that made Elise look gaudy and delicious, like a multicolored hard candy. Ali would not approve of the outfit, which Elise had assembled herself, but Zach was damned if he was going to have an argument and make her get changed on their last morning together.

“Snazzy outfit, Els,” he called down to her.

“Thanks!” she replied, breathlessly, still spinning.

Zach realized he was staring at her. Trying to notice everything about her. Knowing that the next time he saw her, myriad subtle changes would have taken place. She might even have outgrown the T-shirt with the ugly gray pony on it, or just lost interest in the creature, although that seemed unlikely. At the moment she seemed as upset about leaving the pony as she was about leaving her friends, her school. Her father. Time would tell, he supposed. He was about to find out if his daughter was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of person or one for whom absence made the heart grow fonder. He hoped to God she was the latter. Zach downed the last of his coffee, shut the front door, and flipped the lock closed, then grabbed his daughter around her ribs to make her squeal with laughter.

Breakfast was eaten at a tatty pine table in the kitchen of the flat above the gallery, to the strains of Miley Cyrus on the CD player. Zach sighed slightly as his least favorite song by the saccharine pop star came around again, and realized to his horror that he had, gradually and against his will, learned all the words. Elise bobbed her shoulders up and down as she ate her cereal, in a kind of seated dance, and Zach sang a line of the chorus in a high falsetto, which made her choke and spray milk onto her chin.

“Are you excited about the trip?” he asked carefully, once Miley had faded into blessed silence. Elise nodded but said nothing, chasing the last few flakes of cereal around in her bowl, dipping them out of the milk like fishing for tadpoles. “This time tomorrow you’ll be on an aeroplane, high up in the sky. It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?” he pressed, hating himself, because he could see that Elise wasn’t sure how she should answer. He knew she was excited, scared, looking forward to it, sad to be leaving. A mixture of emotions she was too young to have to deal with, let alone express.

“I think you should come too, Dad,” she said at last, pushing her bowl away and leaning back, swinging her legs awkwardly.

“Well, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. But I’ll see you over the holidays, and I’ll come and visit lots,” he said automatically, and then cursed himself in case he couldn’t. Transatlantic flights didn’t come cheap.

“Promise?” Elise looked up at him and held his gaze, as if hearing the hollowness of the words. Zach’s stomach twisted, and when he spoke he found it hard to make his voice sound normal.

“I promise.”

They had to go before the end of the summer holidays, Ali had argued, so that Elise would have a chance to settle in for a couple of weeks before starting her new school. Her new school in Hingham, near Boston. Zach had never been to New England, but he pictured colonial architecture, wide-open beaches, and rows of pristine white yachts moored along bleached wooden jetties. It was these beaches and boats that Elise was most excited about. Lowell had a sailing boat. Lowell was going to teach Ali and Elise to sail. They were going to sail up the coast, and have picnics. Let him see one picture of Elise near a boat without a life jacket on, thought Zach, and he would be over there in a flash to knock Lowell’s smug head off his shoulders. He sighed inwardly at the petty thought. Lowell was a nice guy. Lowell would never let a child near a boat without a life jacket, least of all somebody else’s child. Lowell wasn’t trying to be Elise’s father—he appreciated that she already had a father. Lowell was so damn friendly and reasonable, when Zach wanted so badly to be able to hate him.

He packed Elise’s things into her Happy Feet rolling cabin case, making a sweep of the flat and the gallery for glittery hairclips, Ahlberg books, and the numerous small plastic objects that seemed to pay out behind his daughter wherever she went. A bread-crumb trail, for if ever he lost her. He took Miley Cyrus out of the stereo, then picked up her other CDs—readings of fairy tales and rhyming songs, more cheesy pop music and an obscure set of German folktales sent by one of Ali’s aunts. He picked up Elise’s favorite, the
Tales of Beatrix Potter,
and considered keeping it. They had listened to it in the car on all their day trips during the past week, and the sound of Elise speaking along with the narrator, trying to mimic the voices, and then parroting lines for the rest of the day, had become the soundtrack to the last days of summer.
Give me some fish, Hunca Munca! Quack, said Jemima Puddle-duck!
He thought for a moment that he might play it to himself, and imagine her rendition once she was gone, but the idea of a grown man listening to children’s stories, all alone, was too tragic for words. He packed the CD away with the rest.

At eleven o’clock sharp, Ali arrived and leaned on the bell for just a couple of seconds too long, so that it sounded impatient, insistent. Through the glass in the door Zach saw her blond hair. It was cut into a short bob these days; the sun glancing off it so that it glowed. She had sunglasses hiding her eyes and wore a striped blue-and-white cotton sweater that skimmed her willowy frame. When he opened the door, he managed to smile a little, and noticed that the familiar spike of emotion she usually brought with her was blunter than before, shrinking all the time. What had been helpless love and pain and anger and desperation was now more like nostalgia; a faint ache like old grief. A feeling more softly empty, and quieter than before. Did that mean he was no longer in love with her? He supposed so. But how could that be—how could that love go and not leave a gaping hole inside him, like a tumor carved out? Ali smiled tightly, and Zach leaned down to kiss her cheek. She proffered it to him, but did not kiss him back.

“Zach. How’s everything?” she asked, still with that tight-lipped smile. She’d taken a deep breath before speaking, and kept most of it in, pent up, swelling her chest. She thought there was going to be another row, Zach realized. She was braced for it.

“Everything is great, thanks. How are you? All packed? Come in.” He stepped back and held the door for her. Once inside, Ali took off her glasses and surveyed the virtually empty walls of the gallery. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, a sign of fatigue. She turned to Zach, examined him swiftly with a look of pity and exasperation, but bit back whatever she had been about to say.

“You look . . . well,” she said. She was being polite, Zach realized. They had regressed from being able to say anything to each other to being polite. There was a short pause, slightly awkward as this final transition in their relationship settled. Six years of marriage, two years of divorce, back to being strangers. “Still hanging on to
Delphine,
I see,” Ali said.

“You know I’d never sell that picture.”

“But isn’t that what a gallery does? Buys and sells . . .”

“And exhibits. She’s my permanent exhibit.” Zach smiled slightly.

“She’d buy a lot of flights to visit Elise.”

“She shouldn’t have to,” Zach snapped, his voice hard. Ali looked away, folding her arms.

“Zach, don’t . . .” she said.

“No, let’s not. No last-minute change of heart, then.”

“Where is Elise?” Ali asked, ignoring the remark.

“Upstairs, watching something loud and tacky on TV,” he said. Ali shot him an impatient look.

“Well, I hope you’ve been doing more with her all these weeks than just plonking her down in front of—”

“Oh, give it a rest, Ali. I really don’t need parenting lessons from you.” He said it calmly, half amusedly. Ali took another deep breath and held it. “I’m sure Elise will tell you what we’ve been up to. Els! Mummy’s here!” He put his head through the door to the stairs and shouted this up to her. He had been dreading her departure for so many weeks, since Ali had told him about the move and all the fighting and discussing and fighting again had changed nothing at all. Now the dread of it had grown almost unbearable, and since the time had come, he wanted it over with. Do it quickly, make it hurt less.

Ali put her hand on his arm. “Hang on, before you call her. Don’t you want to talk about . . .” She trailed off, shrugged, and splayed her fingers, searching for words.

“Exactly,” said Zach. “We’ve talked and talked, and you’ve told me what you want, and I’ve told you what I want, and the upshot is you’re going to do what you want, and I can go hang. So just do it, Ali,” he said, suddenly bone-weary. His eyes were aching, and he rubbed them with his thumbs.

“This is a chance for a completely new start for Elise and me—a new life. We’ll be happier. She can forget all about . . .”

“All about me?”

“All about all the . . . upheaval. The stress of the divorce.”

“I’m never going to think it’s a good idea that you take her away from me, so there’s no point you trying to convince me. I’m always going to think it’s unfair. I never contested custody because . . . because I didn’t want to make things worse. Make them harder, for her and for us. And this is how you thank me for that. You move her three thousand miles away, and turn me into some guy who sees her two or three times a year and sends her presents she doesn’t like because he’s so far out of touch with what she
does
like . . .”

BOOK: A Half Forgotten Song
13.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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