A Half Forgotten Song (44 page)

She wanted to go upstairs to the closed room, she wanted to throw open the door and lie down and be comforted, but something stopped her. When she surrendered to that yearning, it would be for the last time. It would be an unrepeatable thing, the one final time, and after that she would be truly alone. It was instinct that told her this; intuition rather than rational thought. She could not face it; would not do it, not yet. She got halfway up the stairs at one point, to escape the black thing, but she made herself stop and go no farther. Valentina was up in her room now, asleep, keeping out of it, leaving Dimity to face the thing alone. Earlier she had cocked an eyebrow at her daughter, just like she had in the summer of 1939.
That was a stroke of luck then, wasn’t it?
she’d said savagely. Now, as then, Dimity had no words to answer her. Valentina was never moved by tears; never once, not even when Dimity was tiny. Not even the time when she was five years old and she tripped over her feet and fell into a hollow packed with furze and nettles and bees, to emerge stung and scratched and howling.
Life’s going to throw worse at you than that, my girl, so stop that racket
. And life had thrown worse at her. Valentina had been right about that.

There was a knocking at the door, loud and insistent, and Dimity stared at it in shock. It was almost dark outside. She waited until she was no longer sure she’d heard anything at all, and then the knocking came again, for longer this time. She thought it could be a trick; it could be anyone, anything, waiting to be let in. Her heart fluttered like a moth. She crossed to the door and hesitantly laid her ear to it. All the voices of The Watch sounded louder that way, coming through the walls and the wood like the sea whispering through the caverns of a shell. Mutterings, accusations, laughter; the rough voices of Valentina’s many, many visitors.

“Dimity? Are you there?” A voice so loud it made her yell and scuttle back from the door.

“Who is that?” she said, and found her eyes full of frightened tears.

“It’s Zach. I’ve just come down to say hello.”

“Zach?” Dimity echoed, thinking hard.

“Zach Gilchrist—you know me. Are you all right?” She did know him, of course. The one with all the pictures, whose voice had now joined all the others in The Watch, asking his incessant questions. Her first thought was to not let him in. She couldn’t remember why she didn’t want to, and only knew that she didn’t; but he could be no worse than the black thing already inside with her, she decided. Perhaps he might make it subside for a while, might make it bide its time. Tentatively, Dimity opened the door.

Z
ach watched Dimity with consternation as she moved around the kitchen, ostensibly making them tea. She twitched and dithered, her eyes darting around the room as if searching for something. Her attention flitted like a mayfly, never quite alighting. She moved the mugs from one countertop to the next, poured the water from the kettle down the sink before it had boiled, and refilled it. At one point, as Zach was telling her about the fight at the pub, she whirled around with a cry and put her hand to her mouth. He thought for a moment that he had shocked her with the violence of the story, but then he saw that she was staring straight past him, at the kitchen window. He turned to look but there was nothing there, nothing outside, just the green hill, rolling down to the sea.

“What is it, Dimity? What’s the matter?” he said. She flicked her eyes at him and shook her head, and Zach saw how quick and shallow her breathing had become. He stood up, took her hands, and drew her towards a chair. “Come and sit down, please. Something’s upset you.”

“They won’t leave me alone!” the old woman cried as she sank into one of the rickety kitchen chairs.

“Who won’t, Dimity?”

“All of them . . .” She passed her hand in front of her eyes again, and took a deep breath. “Ghosts. Just ghosts, that’s all. Just an old woman’s fancy.” She looked up and tried to smile, but it was a tremulous, unconvincing thing.

“You . . . see them, do you?” Zach asked cautiously.

“I . . . I don’t know. I think . . . sometimes . . . that I do. They want answers from me, just like you do.” She gazed at him, steady and desperate, and Zach sensed some vast sorrow inside her.

“Well . . . I won’t ask you for any more answers. Not if you don’t want to give them,” he said.

Dimity shook her head, and tears dropped into her lap. “I saw them together. I didn’t tell you . . . but perhaps you’ve a right to know.”

“Saw who, Dimity?”

“My Charles, and your . . . grandma. I saw them kiss.” There was a note of despair in her voice, and Zach had an odd feeling, like something falling into place. Or perhaps out of place.

“So, you think he could have been—”

“I don’t know!” Dimity cried abruptly. “I don’t know! But I saw them together, and I never told. I never told . . . Charles. Never told Celeste.”

“Jesus.” Zach leaned back in his chair, absorbing her words. Somehow he had always thought, deep down, that the rumor was just that—a rumor. He’d been quite prepared to believe Dimity before, when she’d denied any affair between them. Now, it seemed, he wasn’t quite prepared to be told that there had been one. “So he . . . he betrayed you?” he said softly. Dimity broke into sobs and Zach took hold of her hands. “I’m sorry, Dimity. I really am.”

For a while, Dimity allowed herself to be comforted, but then she gripped his hands fiercely.

“Why are you here? Are you one of them? Have I dreamed you?” she said.

“No, Dimity.” Zach swallowed uneasily. “You haven’t dreamed me. I’m real.”

“Why are you here?” she said again.

“I came . . . well, I suppose I came to say good-bye.” He hadn’t realized it until he said it. He took a deep breath, and looked hard into Dimity’s eyes. “Is there anything else . . .
any
thing else, you can tell me about that summer? About Dennis, or why Charles went off to war? About what happened to Delphine and Celeste?” For a hung moment, neither of them breathed. Their eyes stayed locked together, and the moment seemed to spread out, to pause unnaturally. It was so still that Zach couldn’t hear his watch ticking, or the kettle coming to the boil; he couldn’t hear Dimity’s labored breathing, or the background song of the sea. For a second, he thought he heard a fretful wind, blowing through the dank little kitchen. A hot, dry wind, carrying strange perfumes. For a second he thought he heard the sound of hands clapping, and the voices of children, chanting along in time. He thought he heard the scratch of a pencil on paper and a man’s chuckle, deep and energetic; captivating, infectious. Then he blinked, and it was all gone.

“No,” said Dimity, and for a second Zach could not remember what he’d asked. “No. There is nothing more I can tell you.” Her voice was desolate.

“I want to ask you one more thing.”

“What?”

“May I draw you?”

T
o draw the same subject that Aubrey had once drawn—it was yet another pilgrimage, of a kind. Zach had no doubt that his would be poor work in comparison, but the fascination remained and he was no longer afraid to try. He had still never sketched Hannah. He wondered if he’d missed his chance now, and whether he’d have been able to draw everything that was wonderful and infuriating about her; from her toothy, wolfish smile to her hardheadedness; from her unabashed sensuality to the barriers she put up between herself and the world. Between herself and Zach. He wondered if he’d have been able to capture that nagging familiarity he sometimes saw, when she turned her head just so. Thoughts of her brought a cocktail of lust, anger, tenderness, and frustration, so he tried determinedly to dispel them. He focused on his sitter instead, wearing a frown of concentration, and began.

He didn’t work fast. They took breaks, and drank tea, and put the lights on when it got dark outside. But Dimity didn’t seem in the least impatient. On the contrary, she grew still and serene under his scrutiny, as though waiting to be drawn came as naturally to her as breathing. He tried to capture the wisps of beauty hidden in her disheveled face; tried to imply with subtle shading the way her irises, though surrounded by whites gone grayish-yellow, remained a warm hazel color, perfectly halfway between green and brown. When he finally finished, there was a cramp blazing in his pen hand, and his neck was aching. But when he looked at his drawing, it was Dimity Hatcher. Quite unmistakably. It was the best work he’d done in years.

“Will you show me?” Dimity asked with a dreamy half smile. At once, Zach’s quiet satisfaction dissolved into anxiety. But he took a breath and handed the picture to her. Her face fell into lines of dismay, and her hand rose halfway to her mouth before fluttering back into her lap. “Oh,” she said.

“Look, it’s not very good. I’m sorry—nothing like being drawn by Aubrey, I’m sure . . .”

“No,” she murmured softly. “But it is good . . . it’s good. But I thought . . . silly, really . . . I thought I might see myself as I was. As I was in all these other pictures you brought me. I might be beautiful again.”

“You are, though. Far more beautiful than I’ve managed to draw you . . . Blame the artist, not the sitter, Dimity,” said Zach.

“But it is me. It’s a good likeness. You’re very talented,” she said, nodding slowly. Zach smiled, heartened by this verdict. “Will you take a meal in payment for this picture?”

“You want to keep it?” said Zach.

“Yes, if I can. It’ll be the last one, after all. Who else will draw me, before the end?” She smiled sadly, but Zach was pleased to see how much calmer she seemed now than when he’d arrived. As though being drawn had soothed her troubled spirit.

“All right, then. What’s for dinner?”

It was late when he finally took his leave of Dimity, thanking her for dinner, which had been bacon, eggs, and greens, and giving no answer when she asked when he would be back. It was dark outside, a greenish dark that he found he could see quite well in, after a while, even though he had no flashlight. In the field behind Southern Farmhouse, the Portland ewes dotted the hillside with their lambs keeping close to their heels. From time to time he heard them call to one another, throaty and plaintive. He felt something like affection for them, something almost like pride. As though in helping with the lambing, in sleeping with their mistress, he had taken on some responsibility for them.
They’re not your sheep and she’s not your woman. That is not your life,
he told himself firmly. It was time to banish the pleasant daydream he’d been having, of Elise sitting at Hannah’s kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. It was clearly never going to happen. In the dream, the farm kitchen was clean, tidy, warm. No longer a wreck of a place, a shrine to Hannah’s loss and grief. He excised the images from his mind as carefully as he could, but the process still cut him. The breeze slipped damp fingers down his collar, and he was hit by a sudden rush of loneliness. A tawny owl came to hunt the field in front of him, crisscrossing the pasture on silent wings. He envied its sense of purpose.

On a whim, he walked down towards the cliffs. Saying good-bye again, he realized. He stood and listened to the invisible sea. There was a brisk wind blowing, and the waves against the rocks sounded hurried, impatient. By straining his eyes, he could just about see their white crests as they frothed ashore, and then another light sparkled, like a jewel against the black. Zach blinked, and thought he’d imagined it. But then it came again, from beyond the beach, out on the water. No, not on the water, he realized. On the stone jetty. A flashlight beam, lancing out to sea. Zach’s breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t see the light’s source, couldn’t see a hand or an arm, only the glitter of the beam on the water, stretching out into the blackness. But he knew, he
knew,
it was Hannah. The sky was overcast with cloud, no stars to light the scene, no moon to make it glow. A cold, hard dark, perfect for keeping secrets. It was Tuesday night.

A minute passed, then another. The wind blew Zach’s coat open and parted around him coldly. He was riveted to the spot, his heart bumping uncomfortably. And then, another light appeared out on the water. Coming along the coast from the west; the single larger beam of a boat’s spotlight. It maneuvered in a wide arc opposite the bay, then came in straight towards the flashlight beam, slow and steady, slightly to the left of the stone jetty. In the tiny spot of light from Hannah’s light, Zach saw a man’s large form, swathed in waterproofs; the white side of the boat, the orange flash of a life buoy. Then, as the boat reached the side of the jetty and stopped, both lights went out, and there was nothing more to see. Zach remained, listening hard. During a slight lull in the wind a minute later, he heard the boat’s engine gunning as it reversed, pulling away again; then he heard nothing more.

Zach’s thoughts were rushing, tumbling along, and he was paralyzed by the need to do something, to react in some way. But in what way, he had no idea. They had smuggled something in from the sea. Something paid for in secret, that needed the cover of night and as little light as possible. James Horne and his boat, and Hannah to know the way, to guide him in. Whatever they had brought was obviously illegal.
More pictures of Dennis,
he thought, or was that only one line of trade? Did they deal in worse things as well? He stood with the silent bulk of The Watch behind him and the invisible drop down to the ocean in front of him, and felt as though the whole of Blacknowle had shut him out. It had seemed for a while as though he might settle, as though he might be included there. He’d thought that Dimity Hatcher was his friend; that Hannah was his girlfriend. That he would be the one to put Blacknowle on the map with a wholly different book about Charles Aubrey. But now he saw that it had all been a misconstruction on his part. He’d been played along with to a point, and then brushed aside. Zach felt the pain of this rejection beneath a rising swell of anger. Below him, the sea hissed in the dark.

He strode back towards the village at a rapid pace, so that he was out of breath by the time he got to the top of the track. He moved as though he had a purpose, when in truth he had no idea where his walk would terminate, and what he would do when it did. His anger was directionless, purposeless, just like his impatient speed. But in the next moment, both were abruptly curtailed for him. When he saw what was up ahead, at the top of the lane to Southern Farm, Zach’s pace dwindled to nothing. He stood and stared. Three police cars were parked nose-to-tail, tucked into the hedge at the top of the lane. One had its lights on, its engine running softly. Uniformed officers either sat in their vehicles or waited in the road beside them; three stood in a tight knot nearest the running car, their dark clothing the perfect camouflage on such a dark night. They looked tense, alert. One looked over at Zach where he stood, stock-still, in the middle of the road. The shock of that sudden scrutiny pushed Zach into motion again, and he carried on towards them with a prickle of misplaced guilt. He walked right past them, trying not to seem curious, and as he did there was a blast of static from a radio, and the officer who’d noticed him dipped his head towards the microphone.