A Half Forgotten Song (35 page)

“You can understand why these ancient kings wanted this to be their final and everlasting view, can’t you?” he said softly. Dimity nodded. Below them, lights were starting to come on down in the medina, where the shade was deepest. They sparkled like fallen stars.

“I never imagined a place like this, in all the time I was in Blacknowle. It doesn’t seem fair that this should have existed all the while, yet I never knew of it.”

“There are a million more places besides, Mitzy. The more you travel, the more you will understand how vast the world truly is.”

“Will you take me to other places, then, Mr. Aubrey? Will you take me with you, when you go?” In the instant after she spoke these words, she could hardly believe she’d let them sound out loud. Charles said nothing for a long time, and Dimity’s heart curled in on itself, braced for a blow.

“I’ll do my best for you, Mitzy. Who knows which way life will take us?” he said at last. Dimity glanced at him as he gazed out over the city with the light of it shining in his eyes. Such an intent, faraway look; as though he was trying to stare into a future that neither of them could see. She blinked, and her heart uncurled itself.
I’ll do my best for you, Mitzy.
Suddenly all the vast promise of the world resounded in those words.
For you, Mitzy.
They sat for a long time while the sky overhead grew dimmer, blushing pink against the turquoise; a few wisps of high cloud glowed silver and gold. A heavenly scent surrounded them, and Dimity looked over her shoulder to see a jasmine plant scrambling along the broken wall of the tomb, arching over them like a wedding bower, to release its perfume.

C
eleste and the girls were already at the
riad
when Charles and Dimity returned, parched and dusty, as true darkness began to fall. The three of them were in the courtyard; Celeste and Élodie curled together on a low couch while Delphine sat on the edge of the fountain, leaning over to watch the constant play of the water. Celeste looked up when Charles greeted her, and with a shock Dimity noticed how red and puffy her eyes were, how streaked and salty her face.

“My darling! Are you all right? What happened?” asked Charles, crossing to crouch down in front of her. His words, his posture, gave Dimity a nasty feeling. She hung back, skirted them, and went to sit near Delphine, who did not look up. As she passed, she felt Celeste’s eyes flicker up at her. She didn’t need to see her face to know what expression would be on it. That same hard look as when they had found her sitting in the kitchen at Littlecombe, with Charles’s picture of Dimity in her hand.

“I will tell you later. Where have you been? We were worried.” Celeste’s voice was hoarse.

“Just up to the tombs. I told you I wanted to go and see the view . . .”

“And you took Mitzy with you? I thought we decided we would all go up to the tombs tomorrow? Delphine wanted to . . .”

“Well, we can go again. You can take the girls, any time you want to. And of course I took Mitzy—she’d been here on her own all morning.”

“I am sure Mitzy can cope with being by herself for a little while,” said Celeste, her voice taking on a dangerous edge. Dimity didn’t dare look up, and, beside her, Delphine’s fingers, which had been stirring slow whirlpools, went still.

“It hardly seemed fair,” Charles said carefully.

“Our daughters might like to spend a little time with you too, Charles.”

“You took our daughters to see your family. Must the whole world wait and hold its breath until you return?” Charles said coldly. There was a loaded pause. Dimity looked up cautiously and saw the way the two of them glared at each other. Still nestled into her mother’s side, Élodie looked tense and unhappy.

“Girls. Go upstairs to your room,” said Celeste. Without hesitation, all three of them obeyed.

Their voices echoed up from the courtyard, and Dimity tried not to make it obvious that she wanted to listen. As if she could tell, Élodie sang a tuneless song about a frog, over and over again, so that her parents’ exact words were impossible to distinguish. From quiet to loud, from a whisper to an angry crescendo from Celeste, the argument churned on like a stormy sea. Delphine leaned out over the balcony, as if to put herself as far from it all as she could. Since she couldn’t hear what the fight was about, Dimity went over to join her. Delphine gave her a small, worried smile.

“They do this sometimes. But they always love each other again afterwards,” she said.

“Why are they arguing? It looked like your ma had been crying before.”

“She got upset at
grandmère et grandpère
’s house.”

“What about?”

“Well . . . her mother was so happy to see her. We had a lovely lunch there with her. She is Berber, but of course you know that. But when her father came home, he—”

“Delphine! You don’t have to tell her
everything
!” Élodie snapped, breaking off her song. In the quiet after she spoke, Charles’s voice rose from below:

“You’re being irrational. You always are when you’ve been home to your parents!”

“I have given up
everything
for you!” Celeste cried.

“But I have given you everything you wanted!” Charles countered. Quickly, Élodie resumed her singing.

“What did her father do?” Dimity asked.

“He . . . well, he’s French and he’s quite old. Mummy sometimes says he’s from another age, and she means he’s quite old-fashioned. But he won’t see her or speak to her, or to us, because . . .”

“Because they’re not married?”

“Yes.” The two girls looked out across the scattered city lights in silence for a while, listening as the words of Élodie’s song got tired and jumbled and began to descend into nonsense. Beneath it, the other voices seemed to have stopped, and as Élodie stumbled into silence, all three of them listened, ears tuned to the least noise. None came, and after thirty seconds Delphine exhaled, her shoulders slumping. “There. Over,” she said with quiet relief.

“Why haven’t they got married?” Dimity asked.

“God, Mitzy, you’re such a nosy parker!” said Élodie, and though even Dimity agreed with her this time, she still needed to know.

“Daddy won’t. He can’t because—”

“Delphine! You know you’re not supposed to say!” Élodie cried.

“I won’t tell,” said Dimity, but Delphine bit her lip, shook her head.

“I can’t say, but he has a good reason why he can’t. She doesn’t mind most of the time. It’s only because of the way her father treats her now. He won’t . . . he won’t even let her into the house. He was so angry when he came home today and saw her, but you can see it hurts him, too. It was horrible. Straight away he demanded to see her hand, and when he saw that there was no ring on her finger, that was it. He said she had to leave. Poor Mummy! She loves her father very much.” Delphine spoke with a kind of gentle desperation, but Dimity hardly heard her. Her mind was racing, picking at the threads of what had been said; picturing the way Celeste had looked at her downstairs, the way Élodie had prevented her sister from telling her the whole story. She started to guess at why Charles would not marry Celeste, and the answer she came up with made joy blaze through her like the sun rising.

T
he following day, Celeste beckoned Dimity into her room and opened up a canvas bag on the bed. The bag was full of clothes.

“These were mine when I was growing up. I thought they might fit you. I fetched them yesterday from my parents’ house . . . they will be better for you to wear while you’re here.” She pulled a few items out and handed them to Dimity. Her eyes were no longer swollen, but her face still seemed heavy with sadness. Her hair, hanging straight around her face, was tangled. “Well? Would you like to wear them or not?”

“Yes please, Celeste. Thank you,” said Dimity meekly, rolling the clothes she’d been handed into a bundle. The cottons were soft and light.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Go and try them on!” Celeste snapped. For a second her eyes lit with anger, but then sadness filled them again. “Sorry, Mitzy. I am not angry with you . . . It’s not your fault that . . . you are here. I am angry with . . . men. The men in my life! The rules they design for us, to have a stick with which to beat us. Go; go on. Try the clothes. The trousers go on first, underneath the long tunic.” She waved her hand at Dimity and turned back to the canvas bag, lifting out more clothes and laying them in matching piles.

In her own room, and with Delphine’s help, Dimity put on baggy trousers with a string-tie at the waist and buttoned cuffs at the ankles, a lightweight undershirt, and a long, open tunic with swinging sleeves, which was belted around her ribs with a wide sash. It was very similar to the robes she often saw Celeste wearing in Blacknowle, but on her own body the outfit felt alien and unusual. She twirled, and watched the way the long swath of fabric swirled out around her. It was a deep shade of violet and had embroidery around the neckline; so weightless compared to the heavy fabric of her felt skirt that she could hardly feel it. It was finer than anything she had ever worn before. She slipped her feet into her shoes, and Delphine laughed.

“Do I look silly?” said Dimity.

“You look lovely, but . . . you can’t wear those heavy old shoes with it! They look daft. Here—borrow my sandals until you have some of your own. You look like a proper Moroccan lady now. Doesn’t she, Élodie?” Delphine looked at her little sister, who was scowling with fury, and Dimity took that to mean that the outfit suited her well.

“She’s not Moroccan, though—
we’re
more Moroccan than she is!
I
want to wear a caftan. I’m going to tell Mummy!” Élodie stamped her foot and stormed from the room.

“Oh, do grow up, Élodie!” Delphine called after her; then she looked at Dimity and they laughed. “The boy who lives here will fall over backwards when he sees you,” said Delphine. But Dimity didn’t care about him in the slightest. She looked down at the brightly colored fabric wrapped around her body and wanted to know if Charles would like it.

Feeling nervous and proud, Dimity went downstairs with the girls to find Charles and Celeste waiting on one of the couches in the courtyard.

“Well? What do you think of our Moroccan Mitzy?” said Delphine, gently pushing her into a twirl. She ran her hands nervously over the bright fabric, fitting it to the contours of her body. Charles approved, she could tell. His eyes widened slightly at first, and then narrowed in thought, and he tipped his head to one side when he looked at her, so she knew he was almost ready to draw, or to paint. Celeste gave her a steady stare, her expression hard to read, but when Dimity crossed to sit near to her, she noticed that Celeste’s body was rigid, trembling ever so slightly; her nostrils had tiny pale crescents in them, where even they were held stiff, flared, fixed.

“How old are you now, Mitzy?” she asked quietly.

“I was sixteen over the winter, I think.”

“You think?”

“Ma never . . . Ma’s never been too clear on which year I was born, but I’ve been able to guess it, kind of.”

“Truly a woman now, then, and old enough to wed,” said Celeste, still with that same preternatural stillness to her that was making Dimity deeply uneasy. She was relieved when Élodie, ever hungry, roused them all to go in search of lunch.

I
n the following weeks Charles sketched Dimity many times, as though seeing her in Moroccan costume was all he had needed to make the images in his head coalesce. He painted her in shifting watercolors, a medium he rarely used, sitting by a well beneath one of the city gates, a well which was said to have healing powers and could cure any woman of an aching back. He sketched her in oils, drawing water from one of the ornately tiled drinking fountains in the city, or sipping from her cupped hands with the swinging sleeves of her caftan pushed back to keep them dry. At the Merenid Tombs again, this time with Celeste and the girls as well, he drew her half hidden by the decaying stonework, with the wide vista from that vantage point laid out in front of her. And each time she posed for him, Dimity felt every stroke of the pen or the brush or the graphite, as though it were his hands, not his eyes, that moved over her in constant appraisal. She shivered at it, felt her skin go cold and yet burn at every imagined touch of his fingers. Twice, three times he had to ask her to open her eyes, because she had shut them unconsciously, turning all her attention inward to focus on the ecstasy of the feeling.

But Celeste did not smile, if she happened to see; she looked serious, and questioning, as though she could read Dimity, and had suspicions about what made her close her eyes like that. When Charles talked to them about the piece he was planning, a Berber market scene with one young maiden as the symbol of all that could be lovely in a barren landscape, Celeste suggested that he had two genuine Berber maidens and one Berber mistress to choose from for the picture. Dimity felt anxious for a moment, but Charles merely shrugged and said absently: “I see Mitzy for it. She’s the perfect age.”
Perfect, perfect . . .
The word sung gladly in her ears.

“Delphine is not even two years younger, and is just as tall,” Celeste pointed out.

“But Delphine does not have Mitzy’s . . .” He trailed off uncomfortably.

“Mitzy’s what?” said Celeste, in a dangerous tone of voice.

“Never mind.”

“What, Charles? Tell me. Tell me what it is that fascinates you so, that you must put her face in every picture, and your daughters’, your mistress’s, in none?” Celeste leaned towards him and stared intently into his eyes. Dimity was glad that Delphine and Élodie were a good way off and would not hear. Her own cheeks blazed, and she kept her eyes down, hoping to escape Celeste’s attention.

“There’s nothing in it, Celeste. It is only a matter of her age, and the propriety of using one’s own child to model for a celebration of nubile beauty—”

“I see. So I am not young enough, and Delphine is not beautiful enough. You are honest, even if you are not loyal,” she snapped, rising to her feet and glaring savagely at Charles. Dimity snatched a glance at her, but averted it at once when the Moroccan woman’s eyes turned to alight on her. There was a dreadful pause, and then relief as Celeste stalked away without another word, and Dimity let the pleasure of hearing Charles talk of her beauty echo in her head.