A Half Forgotten Song (20 page)

“Dimity? Are you all right?”

“He did so many sketches, up at that chapel. That’s Saint Gabriel’s chapel, the haunted one. He couldn’t decide what was best, how I should stand. For three weeks we walked to and fro, to and fro. We trod the path up the hill deeper than it ever had been, I reckon. One day I got so tired, standing still for so long, and with my belly rumbling as I’d had no time for breakfast—he wanted the early morning light, he said—that my head started spinning and everything wobbled in my ears and the light went dark, and before I knew what was what I was on the ground and he was cradling my head, my Charles, like I was a precious thing . . .”

“You fainted?”

“Dead away. I reckon he was half annoyed at me for moving for a moment, till he realized I’d swooned!” She laughed a little, rocking back in her chair, clasping her hands together and raising them up. The paper flapped like a solitary wing. Zach smiled and fingered the notebook across his knees.

“That was in 1938, is that right? The year before he went off to the war.”

“Yes. That year . . . I think that was my happiest time . . .” Her words faded to a whisper, then to nothing. Her eyes shone for a moment, frozen and still. She dropped the printout of the painting and her fingers went to the ends of her long plait, stroking, rolling. “Charles was happy, too. I remember it. I begged him not to go, the year after that . . . I wanted us to always be that happy . . .”

“It must have been hard . . . with such a recent death in the family, and under such tragic circumstances. So much upheaval,” said Zach. For a moment, Dimity didn’t answer, and there was a pause, but instead of her gaze falling into the past, Zach saw rapid thoughts flying across her face. Her mouth fell open slightly, thin lips parting, and she held the tip of her tongue between her front teeth. Keeping it still until the right words were ready.

“It was a . . . terrible time. For Charles. For all of us. He was going to leave them, you see. Leave her to be with me. And then when it happened, he felt very guilty, you see.”

“But nobody blamed him for what happened, surely?”

“Yes, some did. Some did. Because he was an older man, and me still so young. Young in my body, perhaps, but I had an old soul. I always thought that—even when I was a child, I never felt like one. I think we only stay children if people let us, and nobody let me. There was talk, you see—about sin begetting sin.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
I heard Mrs. Lamb up at the pub say that to him one night, as he was walking past. As though by loving me, he was causing bad things to happen. Bringing punishment on himself. But he was never wed to Celeste, you know. He broke no vows to her, by loving me.”

“I never thought Charles Aubrey would be bothered about what people said about him. He never seemed to mind much the rest of the time. About society, and convention, I mean.” At this Dimity frowned, and looked down at her fingertips, the split wisps of her hair. Zach saw her draw in a long breath, as if to steady herself.

“No. He was a free man, truly. Guided only by his heart.”

“And yet . . . I’ve always been bewildered by his decision to go off to the war,” said Zach. “He was an ideological pacifist, after all, and he still had responsibilities. People who needed him—like you, and Delphine . . . Do you know why he went? Did he ever explain it to you?”

Dimity appeared unsure how to answer him, and though it seemed for a while that she would, in the end the silence stretched and her face grew anxious, suffused with all the mute desperation of a child at the front of the class who has been told she may not sit until the equation is solved.

“He went off to war because . . .” Tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes. Shocked, Zach stayed silent. “I don’t know why! I’ve never known. I’d have done anything to keep him here with me, anything he asked. And everything I did, I did for him.
Everything.
Even . . . even . . .” She shook her head. “But he was in London when he went, when he joined the army. He went from London, not from here, so I didn’t get a chance to stop him. And . . . I never told her!”

“Never told who, Dimity?”

“Delphine! I never told her that . . . that it wasn’t her fault!”

“That what wasn’t her fault? Dimity, I don’t understand . . . it was Delphine’s fault that he went to war?”

“No! No, it was . . .” She broke off, tears making the words thick and unintelligible. Zach reached over to her and took her hands.

“Dimity, I’m sorry, I . . . I didn’t mean to upset you, really. Please, forgive me.” He squeezed her hands to distract her, but she kept her face turned to the floor, with tears running down the creases in her skin to gather along her jaw. She rocked herself a little, back and forth, and made a quiet keening sound, a sound of such profound sadness that Zach could hardly stand it. “Please don’t cry, Dimity. Please don’t. I’m sorry. Listen, I don’t understand what you’re telling me about Delphine, and about the war. Can you explain it to me?” Gradually, Dimity’s sobbing eased, and she fell still.

“No,” she croaked then. “No more talking. I . . . can’t. I can’t talk about him dying. And I can’t talk about . . . about Delphine.” She turned her face to him, and it was raw with emotion. Not just grief, he suddenly saw. He blinked, startled. There was far more there than simple sorrow. It looked for all the world like guilt. “Please go now. I can’t talk any more.”

“All right, I’ll go. And we won’t talk about the war any more. I promise,” said Zach, even though he knew then, he was
sure,
that Dimity knew far more about what had happened that last summer of Charles Aubrey’s life than she was prepared to tell him. “I’ll go, if you’re sure you’ll be all right? Next time I won’t ask you anything. I’ll answer
your
questions instead, how about that? You can ask me anything you like about me or my family, and I’ll do my best to answer. Deal?” Wiping at her face, Dimity looked up at him, bewildered but growing calmer. In the end she nodded, and Zach squeezed her hands again before he left, bending to put a kiss on her damp cheek.

Outside, the day was blowy and carried the dusty perfume of gorse flowers. Zach took a deep breath and let it out slowly, only then realizing how tense he had been, how much Dimity’s tears had worried him. He rubbed one hand over his face and shook his head. He had to tread more carefully, be more sensitive; not go blundering in with his questions when it was her life and loss he was asking about, not just some figure from history he had never even met, even if that figure’s blood was running in his veins. He wondered whether he might safely raise the subject of Dennis again—who the young man was, and where the collection that his portraits had come from might be. Zach glanced at his watch and was surprised by how late it was. He had a date with Hannah, and set off towards the beach below Southern Farm to meet her.

Hannah was already on the shore when Zach got there, standing barefoot in the shallows with the hems of her jeans rolled up. She turned and smiled as he approached, folding her arms for warmth.

“I was going to swim, but I can’t decide if I fancy it or not. But now you’re here you can keep me company,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not that warm today, is it?”

“That only makes the sea seem warmer. Trust me.”

“I haven’t got a towel.”

“Diddums.” She gave him a look, appraising and expectant, and Zach had the sudden feeling that he was being tested.

“All right then. I’ve been up at The Watch for the past few hours. I could do with washing that place off my skin.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Nothing specific. It’s just . . . there seem to be so many pent-up memories there. And not all of them that happy.” He thought of the way sorrow sometimes seemed to sit, stony and cold, in every corner. “Talking to Dimity can be a bit intense.”

“Yes. I suppose it can,” Hannah agreed.

They turned and walked side by side along the shoreline for a while.

“So how are you finding our little corner of Dorset? Not missing the bright lights of Bath?” Hannah asked, flicking stray curls of her hair out of her face where the breeze was playing with it.

“I like it. It’s kind of restful, being surrounded by landscape rather than people.”

“Oh? I had you down as more of a culture vulture than that.” She glanced across at him briefly, and he smiled.

“I am. But as soon as I left London I was stepping back from that way of life, I suppose. London feels like it’s . . . in my past, now. I studied there; I got married there. I wouldn’t want to live there again. Not after everything that’s happened since. Do you ever feel that? Not wanting to go back to significant places?”

“Not really. All my significant places are here.”

“I suppose that is a bit different. And you never wanted to leave at all—leave where you grew up and try something completely different, somewhere else?”

“No.” She paused. “I know that might not be very fashionable; might not seem very adventurous. But some of us are born with strong roots. And wherever you go, you’re still you, after all. Nobody ever really starts a
new life,
or anything like that. You take the old one with you. How can you not?”

“And yet I find myself constantly trying. To start over.”

“And has it ever worked? Have you ever found yourself to be any different?”

“No, I suppose not.” He smiled ruefully. “Perhaps you’re just more content with who you are than the rest of us.”

“Or just more resigned to it,” she said, also smiling.

“Still, your roots must be pretty strong, if you didn’t even think of leaving when . . . when you lost your husband. When you lost Toby.”

Hannah was silent for a while after he said this, and she turned her head to gaze out to sea.

“Toby wasn’t from Blacknowle. He blew into my life for eight great years . . . and then he blew out again. The farm, and the house, were the only things that kept me anchored when he died. If I’d left then . . . I’d have lost myself as well,” she said. They had reached the far corner of the beach, and Hannah stopped. She took a deep breath and then pulled her shirt over her head in one clean movement. Zach looked away, tactfully, but not before he’d noticed a scattering of pale freckles descending the bony line between her breasts. “So, are you swimming fully clothed, or what?” She turned to face him in her bikini, hands on hips. Zach felt curiously voyeuristic—strange for it to be acceptable for him to see her like this, outside, when it would be invasive to look at her in her underwear, indoors. He pulled off his top and dropped his jeans. Hannah let a measuring gaze rise from his white feet to the spread of his shoulders; so bold and overt that he almost blushed. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” She smiled fleetingly, turned, and made her way nimbly across the pebbles to the water. Three strides took her knee-deep; then she lunged forwards, dipped her head beneath the swell of a wave, and started swimming.

Zach followed her, cursing under his breath when he felt the cold grip of the sea around his ankles. It seemed to bite, but then Hannah surfaced nearby, skin shining and hair smoothed back, as slick as a seal’s, and the sight of her urged him on. He took a huge breath and dived in, feeling every muscle contract as the water closed over him. He surfaced with a gasp.

“
Jesus wept!
It’s freezing!” But even as he spoke, the water seemed less shocking, more bearable. He stopped flailing and swam in a small circle till he caught sight of Hannah.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she said. It had been a long time since he’d swum in a British sea, so very different from a warm holiday sea where the water was as clear as a swimming pool, the bottom sandy and featureless. No possible threats, nothing unseen. He put his feet down gingerly, felt rocks and the leathery touch of seaweed, imagined crabs and spiked urchins, things with stinging tentacles. He snatched his feet back up, peering down, but could see his own legs only as a blurry paleness, no more detailed than that. “Swim out a bit more. It gets sandy. Do you see where the water’s breaking over there? Avoid that if you can. Some sharp rocks under there. Come on.” Hannah floated on her back, issuing this steady stream of instructions, and Zach took a breath, ducked under the surface, and kicked hard towards her.

They swam side by side for a while, away from the shore, and the rhythm of it was calming, meditative. Hannah dipped beneath the surface every few strokes, and Zach watched the cloud of her hair, following her down into the heavy water. He swam on, and at one point she surfaced too close to him, with salt in her eyes, blinding her. They collided, and Hannah twisted onto her back, the hard length of her torso touching his as it passed, skin sliding, a lithe and fleeting caress. “Won’t Ilir swim with you?” said Zach.

“No, he’s a big wimp. Scared of the currents.”

“There are currents?”

“Too late to worry about that now! Just stick with me—you’ll be fine. The tide hasn’t turned yet. The chances of you being sucked out to sea are really . . . not that high.” Hannah smiled, and Zach decided that she was joking. “Here. Watch out—we can climb onto the jetty. Great spot for diving off, sunbathing, and making tourists think you can walk on water.” She scrambled carefully upwards, to stand as Zach had seen her before, on a spar of flat rock about a foot beneath the water, jutting out into the bay. “Even at low tide, the far end of this jetty stays covered, and the water off the end is deep enough for a small boat,” she said. “A couple of hundred years ago, smugglers used it all the time.”

“What did they smuggle?”

“Oh, anything. Wine, brandy, tobacco. Spices. Cloth. Anything easy to carry that they knew they could shift once they got it here. Why do you think Dimity’s cottage is called The Watch?”

“I see.” Zach searched with his toes for footholds in the rock, feeling the bite of barnacle shells as he climbed.

They sat side by side on the edge of the rock platform, and the breeze felt colder where it dried them. The sea flickered reflections in their eyes, under their chins.

“So, is that what you’re doing here in Blacknowle, really? Trying to start over again?” said Hannah. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.