A Half Forgotten Song (7 page)

“Glad to know I’m not so very changed, after all of it,” she said.

“Yes,” Zach said, as convincingly as he could. There was a pause; his mind was racing. “I’ve got a picture of you hanging in my gallery at home! I look at it every day, and now here we are, face-to-face. It’s . . . amazing!” He couldn’t keep from smiling.

“What picture is it?”

“It’s called
Mitzy Picking
. It’s of you from behind, but you’re almost looking over your shoulder. Not quite, but almost, and you’re putting something into a basket . . .”

“Oh, yes, I remember that one.” She clasped her hands together, pleased. “Yes, of course. I never really liked it. I mean, I couldn’t see the point of it, not seeing my face and all.”

She hadn’t been picking at all, she’d been sorting. Delphine had been out to collect herbs and collared Dimity as she passed, asking her to check her spoils before she took them into the kitchen. She’d been on her way into the village, on an errand for Valentina. How that woman would storm and swear if Dimity took too long, so she ran her fingers through the plants quickly, removing the dandelion leaves that Delphine had thought were lovage, picking the chickweed out of the chamomile. All morning a tenacious song had been running through her head. It came again then, a low mumble on her lips, a sign of impatience.
As I were a-walking for my recreation, all down by the river I chanced for to stray; I heard a fair maid making loud lamentation, singing Jimmy will be slain in the wars I be feared . . .
She stopped suddenly, heard the faintest echo of the tune carrying on behind her. In a deep voice, a man’s voice—
his
voice. Prickles like the lick of a cat’s tongue went roughly down her spine, and she froze. In the silence then Dimity heard the pencil, softly scraping the paper. A dry caress. She knew not to move, knew that would annoy him. So she carried on, her mind no longer on the job, letting grass stems stay amid the chives and buttercup pass for cress. And all the while she could feel him behind her, feel his eyes upon her, and as if all her senses had come alive she noticed the sun shining hotly on her hair, and the touch of a breeze on the skin of her lower back where her blouse had ridden up. A small area of skin that suddenly seemed utterly, wantonly naked.
In her hand she had posies, her cheeks were like roses . . .
she sang on, and behind her he answered the tune, and she felt it fill her heart, fill it up to bursting.

“What color was your hair?” Zach asked suddenly. Dimity blinked, and seemed to come back from far away. “Sorry, that must sound very rude . . .”

“Charles said it was bronze,” she said quietly. “He said when the light shone on it, it looked like burnished metal; like a statue of Persephone come alive.” In Zach’s mind he saw all the drawings—all the many, many drawings of Mitzy, and he put this color into the wild hair described by Aubrey’s long, lavish pencil lines.
Yes
. He could picture it now, as if the color had always been there, waiting for him to see it.

Suddenly, there was a muffled sound from upstairs. The thump of something being dropped, the smaller thump of it bouncing, just once, and the shuffling creak of a footstep. Dimity turned her eyes to the ceiling and waited, as if something else was coming. Puzzled, Zach also glanced up at the sooty rafters as if he might be able to see through them.

“What was that?” he asked. For a second, Dimity looked at him as if he hadn’t spoken, then her expression changed, grew startled.

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just . . . mice,” she said rapidly. Her fingers in their red mittens fiddled with her hair, rolling the frayed ends to and fro, twisting them. She looked away, her gaze floating aimlessly along the wall.

“Mice?” said Zach, dubiously. It had sounded like something bigger than that. The old woman considered at length before replying. She rocked her feet one way, then the other—to the toes, to the heels, back again.

“Yes. Nothing to worry about. Just mice.”

“Are you sure? It sounded like somebody dropped something.”

“I’m sure. Nobody up there to go dropping anything. But maybe I’ll check. So then, you’ll go on for now? Finished up your tea?” she said, standing stiffly and holding out her hand for it. She looked troubled, distracted. Zach was only halfway down his cup, but he handed it to her anyway. The rim was chipped hazardously, and it tasted as though the milk had turned.

“Okay, sure. It was lovely to meet you, Miss Hatcher. Thanks for the tea, and for talking to me.” She was herding him to the door, bustling around him, eyes down.

“Yes, yes,” she said vaguely. She pulled the door open and that warm, fresh breeze washed in, and all the sounds of the sea with it. Zach stepped out obediently. The front step was worn into a bowl and water had gathered there; moss in all the pocks and crevices of the stone.

“Could I come back and see you again, do you think?” he asked. She began to shake her head automatically. “I would be so grateful . . . I could bring some of the pictures Aubrey drew of you, if you like? Not the original ones, of course, but prints of them . . . in books. You could tell me what it was like as he drew them . . . what you were doing that day. Or something,” he tried. She seemed to consider this, toying with the ends of her hair again. Then she nodded.

“Mind and bring me a heart.”

“A what? Sorry?”

“A bullock’s heart no more than a day old—I need one. And some pins. New pins,” she said.

“A bull’s heart? What, a real one? Why on earth . . .”

“A
bullock’s,
and no more than a day old—mind you check.” She was closing the door on him impatiently, her thoughts already elsewhere.

“Well, all right. I’ll—” The door shut firmly, and Zach was left talking to its bleached wood. “I’ll be sure to check,” he finished.

He turned his back to the door and looked up at the sky, bright whites and shades of gray. Dimity Hatcher. Alive and well and living in Blacknowle—still, after all the many, many years since Aubrey did his drawings of her. Zach could hardly believe it. That she was here, and that nobody else had ever been to see her. He thought quickly, sifting through all the books on Aubrey he’d ever read. Most focused on his life in London, his upbringing in Sussex, his bohemian morals, his relationship with Celeste. A few spoke about Blacknowle and Dimity Hatcher, but only in terms of the depiction and significance of both in his work. No, he was sure. None of the biographers had ever spoken directly to Dimity about the man. He smiled to himself, and wondered what on earth she would do with a bullock’s heart and a packet of pins.

He turned towards the sea instead of back along the track to the village, and walked a hundred yards or so to the edge of the cliff. He went as close as he dared, since the grassy lip curled away out of sight, and he worried he might be standing on nothing but a thin slice of turf, suspended precariously above the drop below. Low waves skirled in over slabs of rock that tumbled steeply from halfway down the cliff to the water. He could see no way down, and the rocks looked dangerous—sharp and half hidden by the churning sea. Not a good spot for a swim. In the lull between waves was a whispering sound; a sigh as the water receded. He looked to the east and then understood why the footpath went inland—the trees he had seen behind The Watch marked the edge of a steep gully, a ravine, slicing into the land. It cut inland for around seventy meters, and at its apex was a tiny shingle beach, empty but for driftwood and other detritus. There could be no way down to it—the walls were sheer. Large white gulls perched on it, resting their wings; some asleep on one leg with their heads tucked away. The Watch was cut off on two sides by the sea, and sat solitary on its own small peninsula.

For a while Zach stood there and gazed far out at the flat water, and thought about Elise. What was it that made children love the seaside so? And made adults feel more alive? Perhaps it was the far, distant horizon, putting troubles into perspective, or the way the light seemed to shine up from the ground as well as down from the sky. They had taken Elise to the beach many times, he and Ali—on holidays in Italy and Spain. Back when they were a couple; when their names fitted snugly together, tripping off the tongue.
Zach and Ali.
But Elise seemed to like the British coast more—seemed to long for rock pools rather than hot sun, seaweed rather than fine white sand. One time she watched, patient and rapt, as Zach poured water from a bucket over some limpets, at regular intervals, for five minutes or more, until they were tricked into thinking that the tide was coming in and began to slide into life. She gasped when they did, hadn’t believed they were alive until then; too still, holding on too tightly—part of the rock, most likely. They couldn’t pull one free, however—as soon as they were touched, the limpets clamped themselves tight to the rock again. Elise tried indignantly, digging with her small pink fingernails until Zach told her to stop, that she would scare them. Then she ran her fingers over them gently instead, and said sorry; apologizing to a scattering of limpets for frightening them.

Turning, Zach walked back past the cottage and was level with the front door when movement down in the valley to his left caught his eye. He paused and looked down the slope to the farm at the bottom. Four or five barns and sheds of various sizes were arranged around two concrete yards, a large one and a smaller second one. The farmhouse was square and painted white, and sat a short distance farther up the valley towards the village, facing The Watch. Its front door was set at the exact center of four sash windows, with an identical row of windows on the floor above. The movement that he’d seen came from a small jeep, which had come into the yard from one of the fields. The driver got out to close the gate, and Zach noticed with some surprise that it was a woman. Short and slight, an unlikely build for a farmer. She strode quickly to the yard gate, and as the wind dropped, he heard the flat metal clang as it slammed shut, carried up to him a fraction of a second after he saw it connect. She turned briskly and he saw a crop of dark, curly hair, cut to shoulder length, held back by a bright green scarf. As she was about to get back into the jeep, something made her pause. She looked up at The Watch abruptly, and Zach, who hadn’t been moving, still felt himself freeze. Caught out, watching a stranger, uninvited. He almost turned away, guiltily, but the way she had also frozen stopped him. There they stood, half a mile apart, staring at each other, and Zach was sure he could sense her surprise. Surprised to see somebody up at the cottage, perhaps. They stood that way for a heartbeat, two, then she got back into the jeep and slammed the door. The sound of the engine was lost to the wind, but as she pulled away towards the house, he saw the pale flash of her face through the window, turning to look at him again.

Zach spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the cliff path in a westerly direction, thinking hard. He needed to go back to his notes, start to restructure the book. It could take on a different format, a different focus. It could be all about the last years of the artist’s life—about his years in Blacknowle. Aubrey had died at what most considered to have been the height of his artistic prowess; the pictures he produced in Blacknowle, and the commissioned portraits he completed in his London studio during those years, formed the bulk of the best of his work. Everybody already knew about his upbringing, his education, his early career, his string of mistresses. But nobody had found Dimity Hatcher before. He thought quickly, totting up. Off the top of his head, he could think of twenty-five drawings of the adolescent girl, made during the thirties. And she appeared in three large oil canvases as well: in one as a Berber maiden, surrounded by desert; in another by some ruins in a deeply forested scene, looking fey and Puckish; and in another as herself, walking along the beach with a basket on her hip full of some dark stuff that Zach had always wondered about. Now he could ask her, he thought with a rush of excitement. In spite of her great age, Dimity’s memories of that time seemed startlingly sharp. Perhaps—no, he was sure—she would remember who Dennis had been. That amorphous young man, whose expression had eluded the artist so.

When Zach arrived back at the Spout Lantern, Pete Murray showed him to his room, ducking his head to avoid the low beams along the upstairs corridor. The room was at the far end of the building, away from the bar. It had a small double bed draped in a patchwork quilt, and a nautical theme—model boats on a shelf with a dried-up starfish; the walls pale blue; seahorses printed on the curtains. An hour or so later, Zach ate a plate of fish pie at a table facing the bar, surrounded by the low buzz of a moderate crowd of locals. He got some nods and smiles, but nobody tried to talk to him, no doubt taking him for a holidaymaker, transient, just passing through and not worth the bother.

People wandered in and out with their dogs, sinking a quick pint as part of their evening walk, and Zach amused himself watching the animals circle and sniff while their owners did the same. He felt heavy with lassitude, the aftereffect of fresh air and exercise. His muscles lengthened and relaxed, his glass of beer made his head light, and he didn’t feel in the least bit conspicuous, or unwelcome. Not until the door rattled open again and a woman strode in, small and wiry, her figure in tight-fitting jeans lost beneath the baggy swaths of a huge tartan shirt. Her legs disappeared into slouchy leather boots, the toes white with dust. Dark curls of hair held back by a peacock-green scarf, its edges frayed and grubby. He recognized her from the jeep at the farm in an instant, and for some reason her sudden appearance gave him a jolt, as if once again he’d been caught out doing something he shouldn’t.

She moved with the same speed and purpose as he had witnessed in the yard, and slowed only when she reached the bar and was greeted by several people. She smiled and shook hands with a few, which Zach found strange and refreshing—to see a woman shake hands rather than offer kisses, like the women he knew in the art world would have done.

“The usual?” Pete greeted her, and though the landlord smiled, Zach noticed he looked slightly uncomfortable, almost nervous. The woman smiled back at him and Zach caught her expression in the mirror behind the bar—the raised eyebrows, the slightly mocking tilt of her lips.