A Half Forgotten Song (5 page)

“Charles Aubrey, I’ll bet.”

“Yes—you’ve heard of him,” Zach said. The barman shrugged amiably.

“Of course. Bit of a claim to fame, he is. Local celeb. He used to come in here all the time, back before the war. Not that I was here then, but I’ve been told; and there’s a photo of him over there—sitting outside this very establishment with drink in hand.”

Zach put down his drink and crossed to the far wall, where the framed photograph was hanging in a foxed mount speckled with dead thrips. The picture had been enlarged and was grainy as a result. It was a photo Zach had seen before, reprinted in an old biography of the man. He felt a peculiar frisson, thinking that he was standing in the same pub that Charles Aubrey had visited. Zach studied the picture closely. The light of an evening sun lit Aubrey’s face from the side. He was a tall man, lean and angular. He was sitting on a wooden bench with his long legs crossed, one hand cupped over the upper knee, the other holding a glass of beer. He was squinting against the light, his face turned partly away from it, which threw his bony nose into relief; his high cheekbones and broad brow. His jaw was hard and square. Thick, dark hair, the light gathering in its kinks and waves. It wasn’t a classically handsome face, but it was striking. His eyes, staring right into the camera, were steady and intense; his mood impossible to read. It was a face you had to look twice at—compelling, perhaps unsettling; as if it might be terrifying in rage but infectious in mirth. Zach couldn’t see what it was that women had seen in him, that apparently
all
women had seen in him, but even he could sense the power of the man, the strange magnetism. The picture was dated 1939—the summer his grandparents had met the man. Later that year, war would break out. Later that year, torn apart by grief and loss, Charles Aubrey would join the Royal Hampshire Regiment, which would form part of the British Expeditionary Force that set out into mainland Europe to meet Hitler. The year after, he would be caught up in the chaos of Dunkirk and killed; his body buried hastily in an Allied cemetery, his tags brought home by comrades.

When Zach turned away, the old man was watching him with a grave expression, eyes of such a pale blue they were almost colorless. Zach smiled and gave him a nod, but the old man looked back down at his empty plate without acknowledging him, so Zach returned to the bar.

“I wonder, do you know of anybody still living in the village who might remember those days? Who might have met Charles Aubrey?” Zach said to the barman. He kept his voice low, but in the quiet of the pub it was plainly audible. The barman smiled wryly and paused. He didn’t glance over at the elderly couple. He didn’t need to.

“There might be some. Let me have a think.” Behind him, the couple got up. With the slightest of salutes to the publican—a raised, gnarled index finger—the man cupped one hand around his wife’s elbow and steered her towards the door. The whippet followed at their heels, tail curled tightly between its legs, toenails tapping delicately. As the door swung shut, the publican cleared his throat. “The thing is, those that do might not be that keen to talk about it. You have to understand, lots of people have come asking questions about Aubrey over the years. He caused a bit of
a scandal around here, back in the day, and since he wasn’t actually
from
Blacknowle, most feel no need to play up the association.”

“I understand. But, surely, you know—seventy-odd years later . . . people can’t still be upset about him, can they?”

“You’d be amazed, mate,” said the publican, with a grin. “I’ve lived here seventeen years now, and run this pub for eleven. The locals still call me a latecomer. They’ve got long memories and they can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe. The first week we moved in, my wife pipped her horn at some sheep blocking the lane. She didn’t see the farmer coming up behind them. And one thing’s clear—she’ll
never
be forgiven for such a display of impatience.”

“People hold a grudge against Aubrey? Why?” said Zach. The other man blinked, and seemed to hesitate before answering.

“Well, if they think my wife wasn’t the right sort for sounding her horn at some sheep, can you imagine what they thought of a man who only came for the summer, made his money drawing saucy pictures of young girls, and lived in sin with a foreign mistress? And all this back in the thirties?”

“Yes, I suppose he must have caused a bit of a stir. But I’d hardly call his pictures saucy.”

“Well, not to us maybe. But back in the day. I mean, he never painted the plain ones, did he?” The man chuckled, and Zach felt a defensive prickle on Aubrey’s behalf. “And then there was all that other business . . .”

“Other business?”

“You must know about . . . the tragedy that happened here?”

“Oh yes, of course. But . . . that was just a tragedy, wasn’t it? Not Aubrey’s fault at all.”

“Well, there’s some that might argue with you there. Ah—here’s your lunch now.” Zach’s sandwiches were brought out by a grumpy-looking girl. He smiled as he thanked her, but she could only manage a flick of her mascara-laden eyelashes in return. The publican rolled his eyes. “My daughter, Lucy. Loves working for her old man, don’t you Lu?” Lucy didn’t answer as she drifted back to the kitchen.

“So you don’t think anybody will talk to me about him? What about . . . do you know of anybody who has some Aubrey pictures they might be willing to let me see?”

“Couldn’t tell you, sorry.” The publican leaned his knuckles on the bar, tipped his head, and seemed to think hard. “No, no idea. Worth a pretty penny these days, aren’t they? I don’t think folk round here would have any—if they once had, they’d have sold them. Farming folk for the most part, around Blacknowle. Either that or catering to tourists, neither trade well known for making the money roll in.”

“What if . . . do you think if I offered to . . . pay for information, or rather memories, of Aubrey . . . do you think that might get me anywhere?” said Zach, and again the publican chuckled.

“Can’t think of a faster way to get yourself ostracized,” he said jovially. Zach sighed, and concentrated on his sandwiches for a while.

“I suppose you must see a lot of tourists and second-home owners down here; it must be easy to resent them. My parents brought me here on holiday once—to Blacknowle itself, and to Tyneham and Lulworth. We stayed in a cottage not three miles away. And my grandparents used to come here, too, back in the 1930s. My grandma remembered meeting Aubrey. I always suspected . . . I always suspected she remembered more than just meeting him, if you catch my drift,” said Zach.

“Did she now? Well, I daresay she wouldn’t be the only one! I don’t resent the tourists. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. It’s been too quiet this summer, what with the weather being so crap. Are you staying in the area for a while, while you do your research? Got a lovely room upstairs, if you’re interested. Lucy’s a right thundercloud in the morning, but she does a great fry-up.”

“Thanks. I . . . hadn’t really thought about it. I might go for a walk and take in the views that inspired the artist, but if nobody will talk to me and nobody has any pictures I can look at, there’s not really a lot of point in me staying,” said Zach. The landlord seemed to consider this for a while, wreathed in steam rising from beneath the counter as he dried clean glasses from the dishwasher. His face shone with the moisture.

“Well, there is one place you could try,” he said carefully.

“Oh?”

The publican pursed his lips, and seemed to consider for a second longer. Then he leaned forward and spoke in a hushed tone, so conspiratorial that Zach almost laughed.

“If you just happened to take a walk along the track that heads southeast out of the village towards Southern Farm, and about half a mile along there you took the left fork, you’d come to a cottage called The Watch.”

“And . . . ?”

“And there’s somebody there who might talk to you about Charles Aubrey. If you pitch yourself right.”

“And what would be the right way to pitch myself?”

“Who knows? Sometimes she’ll chat, sometimes she won’t. It might be worth a shot, but you didn’t hear about her from me. And go carefully—she lives alone, and some people are . . . protective.”

“Protective? Of this woman?”

“Of her. Of themselves. Of the past. Last thing I need is it getting out that I’ve been helping a stranger ferret for information. This lady’s the private kind, you know. Some of us in the village used to drop in on her, to make sure she was all right, but she’s made it known over the years that she doesn’t appreciate it. Wants to be left alone. What can you do? Must be a lonely life for her but if a person doesn’t want help . . .” He went back to wiping glasses, and Zach smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, don’t thank me. It may come to nothing, just to warn you. I’ll make up that bed upstairs for you, shall I? The rate’s forty-five a night.”

“Take a credit card?”

“Of course.”

“I’m Zach, by the way. Zach Gilchrist.” He held out his hand, which the landlord shook with a smile.

“Pete Murray. Good luck at The Watch.”

D
imity had been dozing again, after a lunch of hard-boiled eggs and salad leaves. Two of the hens were going into molt. They looked patchy and bedraggled, and she muttered to them when she found no eggs underneath them.
Lay, lay my girls
.
Let the eggs drop or be straight to the pot.
Repeated over and over, the little rhyme sounded like a spell, and soon the voice Dimity heard was her mother’s, not her own. Valentina kept coming back to her since her waking dream, since her vision, her premonition. Her mother had been gone a long time. Dimity had thought maybe forever, and hadn’t been sad about that—apart from the endless quiet sometimes, the stillness. But lately she’d caught her mother watching her from the citrine eyes of the ginger cat; in the coils of skin as she peeled an apple; reflected, minute and upside down, in the bloated drip of water that always hung from the kitchen tap. After the night of the storm, after the night she saw Celeste and had her premonition, Dimity had found the old charm on the hearthstone. Knocked out of the chimney by the wind after nigh on eighty years, a shriveled nugget of old flesh the size of an egg; the pins gone rusty, and some of them missing. And then the dreams had started. That was how Valentina had got in; and that was a puzzle, because the charm should only keep evil spirits away. Perhaps not such a puzzle.

Dimity would have to make a new charm, and soon. Where to get a bullock’s heart, fresh, no more than a day old? Where to get a packet of new pins, clean and sharp? But each day without it the house was open to intruders. A wide-open door, especially when she slept. She roused herself from her doze and caught a flash of yellow hair, reflected in the windowpane. Dull yellow hair with black, black roots; gone when she blinked.

“Good day to you, Ma,” Dimity whispered, just to be civil. Just to stay on the safe side. She stood carefully, straightening her back with caution. The light outside was still gray, but bright enough to make her squint. There was much to do before night fell. All the animals to do, and something found to eat, and a new charm of some kind for the chimney flue. She couldn’t make a proper one yet, but something to tide her over—a mermaid’s purse would be a start. Down to the shore, then? Dimity hardly ever went anymore, didn’t trust her own feet. Didn’t like to be seen. But there might be one tucked away somewhere, around the house, and she resolved to look because it was unsettling, having Valentina back. Unsettling to think that her mother might notice her looking for a mermaid’s purse and guess at her purpose. The retribution would be awful.

Dimity turned from the window but as she did, her eye was caught again. Not Valentina, not a vision. A
person
. A man. Her heart got caught in her throat. He was young, tall and lean. For a second, she hardly dared to believe it, but it could have been . . . But no. Not tall enough, too broad at the shoulder. The hair too light, too short. But of course not, of course not. She shook her head. A rambler, nothing more. Not many came past the cottage, because the track was not a footpath; he shouldn’t have been there. It was private land, her land, and beyond the cottage he would find no way through. Dimity watched him approaching. Looking at The Watch intently, slowing his pace. Curious. He would get to the bottom and then have to turn around and go back again. Would he be one of those that gazed in at her windows? Twenty years ago nobody ever walked past, but these days there were more. She didn’t like the intrusion. It made her feel as though a tide of people was gathering out of sight; growing, swelling, coming to nudge up against her. But this one wasn’t walking past. This one was coming to the door. He had nothing in his hands; he wore no badge, no uniform. She couldn’t tell what he might want. The hairs stood up all along her arms. This was him, then. This was the one she’d seen coming. Valentina capered in the slant of light on the side of the teapot, but whether it was in warning or simple glee, Dimity couldn’t tell.

Zach listened hard at the door, trying to hear some sound of movement behind the hum of the sea and the fumbling breeze. The Watch was a long, low cottage, the upper story built well into the eaves of the thatch. The straw was dark and uneven, sagging into deep pockets in some places; great tufts of grass and forget-me-nots grew along the ridge and around the chimney stacks. Zach knew precious little about thatch, but it was obviously badly in need of replacing. The stone walls were whitewashed, and it sat facing west at the top of a long slope that ran down into the valley, where Zach could see scattered farm buildings half a mile or so below. The track to the cottage was dry and stony but looked as though heavy rain would turn it to mud. It approached from the north, towards one end of the house, so Zach had seen that the place was only one room deep. Behind it was a yard enclosed by a high wall, and behind that a small stand of beech and oak trees left over from an earlier century. The breeze whispered through those trees, twisting the dry leaves, speaking of the coming autumn.