A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER FOUR

Zach sat in front of his laptop, surrounded by notes and papers and catalogs, and suddenly realized, almost twenty-four hours later, how neatly Dimity Hatcher had sidestepped his question about Aubrey ever giving her pictures as presents. He was intrigued by her reaction to the picture of Dennis he’d shown her-the way she’d blushed and seemed reluctant to look too long. He opened two magazines and the recent Christie’s catalog to the pages of the Dennis pictures, and set them side by side. He was sitting at a dark, sticky table in the snug of the Spout Lantern, and he’d had two pints of bitter with lunch, which had been a mistake. His head now felt warm and slightly slow. Outside, the sun was a smear of gold over the dusty window glass. He’d been hoping that the alcohol would ease his thoughts; let him make abstract leaps through the stodge of all his notes and come up with a new plan, a plan of brilliant clarity. Instead, his thoughts kept returning to his dad and his grandpa, and the way the silences between them had sometimes seemed to grow to fill the whole room, the whole house. Grow so heavy and tangible that Zach would squirm and twist and find it impossible to sit still, until finally he would be sent to his room or into the garden. He remembered the way his grandpa would criticize all the time, and find fault, and how crestfallen his dad would look with each remark. A bit of car maintenance gone awry, the incorrect decanting of wine, a critical school report for Zach. Zach couldn’t count the number of times he caught his mum glaring blackly at his father. Why don’t you ever stand up to him? Then his father would be the one to twist and fidget in discomfort.

“Pete’s sent me over because your long face is putting off the punters.” Hannah Brock was standing by his table with a pint in her hand and a nonchalant air. Surprised, Zach sat up straighter, and was momentarily lost for words. Hannah took a swig from her pint and gestured at the piles of paper and files surrounding him. “What is all this? Your book?” She tapped the nearest catalog with her fingertips, and Zach noticed a bold stripe of dirt under each of her nails.

“One day it will be. Maybe. If I can ever get my head around it all.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all.”

“There are plenty of books about Charles Aubrey already, aren’t there? Can’t you just copy one of them?” She gave a wolfish sort of grin.

“Oh, I’ve done all that. When I started this thing years ago, I read them all, then all his letters, then I went to all the places where he’d been-born, grew up, educated, lived, worked, et cetera, et cetera. And after I did all that I realized that my book… my book, which was going to be all new and essential and visceral…”

“Was exactly the same as all the other books?”

“Precisely.”

“So what’s brought you here now, to finish it?” she asked.

“It seemed to be the best place,” he said. He looked at her, curious. “You’re very interested all of a sudden, for somebody who didn’t even want to give me the time of day before.” Hannah smiled and drank again. She was already halfway down her pint.

“Well, I’ve decided you can’t be all bad. Dimity’s a pretty good judge of these things, and you’ve managed to talk your way in there. Perhaps I was a little…”

“Hostile and rude?” He smiled.

“Suspicious, before. But, you know, a lot of people come and go from here. People on holiday, people with weekend homes or summer homes. People with Aubrey fixations.” She flicked her eyes at Zach. “It’s hard on the people who live here. You invest time and energy getting to know people, welcoming them, then off they go again. After a while, you stop bothering.”

“Dimity told me that your family had lived here for generations.”

“That’s right. My great-grandparents bought the farm at the turn of the last century,” said Hannah. “So, what else did she tell you about me?” Zach hesitated before answering.

“That… you lost your husband, some time ago.” He glanced up but her face was calm, unruffled. “And that you’re working really, really hard to keep the farm going.”

“Well, that’s true enough, God only knows.”

“But not today?” He smiled again, as she drained her glass.

“Well, some days the sheep are all out eating grass without a care in the world, the to-do list is as long as your arm and the coffers are full of cobwebs, and there really is nothing else you can do but get pissed at lunchtime.” She stood up and nodded at his pint, barely a third empty. “Another?”

While she was at the bar, Zach stared at the pictures of Dennis again, and wondered at her change in demeanor. Possibly it was as innocent a reversal as she’d explained-he hoped so. Dennis. Three young men, all similar, all sweet, all with an air of goodness and innocence that was childlike, as though the artist had been keen to prove that here was a person who had never had a base thought in all his life. Never bullied anyone, or taken advantage of another person’s weakness. Never acted selfish or deceitful in pursuit of lust or envy or financial gain. But he just could not get away from the notion that there was something wrong with them. Each face was minutely, subtly different; either physically or emotionally. As if they were three different young men, not the same one. Either three different young men, drawn by Aubrey and all called Dennis; or else the same young man drawn three times, by somebody other than Aubrey. Neither option made much sense. He ran his hands through his hair in confusion and wondered if he was cracking up. Nobody else seemed to have any doubts about their authenticity.

Zach checked the information in the front of the Christie’s brochure. The sale was in eight days’ time; viewing had been two days ago. He knew a member of the fine art team at the auction house-Paul Gibbons, who’d been at Goldsmiths with him. Another artist who had sidestepped from trying to make a living selling his own art to making a living selling other people’s. Zach had already tried to discover the identity of the vendor of the recent Aubrey pictures from Paul and been told in no uncertain terms that strict anonymity was a condition of sale. Now he wrote Paul a quick e-mail to ask if there was some way he could get in touch with any of the people who’d bought one of the portraits of Dennis. It was a long shot, he knew, but there was a chance that seeing the work in the flesh might provide some extra insight.

“Who’s that?” said Hannah, looking at the catalog as she sat back down and passed Zach another pint, even though he’d refused her offer. “Drink up,” she said.

“Therein lies the mystery,” Zach said, and took several gulps from his glass. Suddenly, getting drunk at lunchtime with this hard, vibrant woman, who smelled of sheep but swam in a red bikini, seemed like as good a plan as any. “Dennis. No other name, no reference to him in any of Aubrey’s letters or in any of the books about him.”

“Is that a big deal?”

“Most definitely. Aubrey was faddy, obsessive; he fell in love with something-a place or a person, or an idea-and he painted and drew that thing or person exhaustively, until he’d got everything from it he could, creatively. Then he…”

“Dumped them?”

“Moved on. Artistically speaking. And during that time of immersion he wrote about them in letters, and sometimes in his workbook. Letters to friends, or other artists, or his agent. Listen to this one he wrote about Dimity-I must show her this, actually. I think she’d be pleased. Listen.” He scrabbled around in his notes for a moment, until he found the page he was looking for, marked with a pink paper tag. “This is a letter to one of his patrons, Sir Henry Ides. ‘I have met the most wonderful child here in Dorset. She seems to have been raised half wild, and has never left this village in all her young life. Her whole sphere of reference is the village and the coast within a five-mile radius of the cottage where she grew up. She is untouched, in every sense, and this innocence radiates from her like light. A rare bird indeed, and quite the loveliest thing I have ever seen. She draws the eye the way a splendid view will, or a lance of sunshine breaking through clouds. I enclose a sketch. I plan a large canvas with this girl to embody the essence of nature, or English folk at their very core.’ ” Zach looked up, and Hannah raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think you should show that to Dimity.”

“Why not?”

“It’ll upset her. She has her own memories and… ideas about what passed between her and Charles. I don’t think it would sit well to hear herself described so objectively.”

“But… he says she’s the loveliest thing he’s ever seen.”

“That’s not the same as being in love with her, though, is it?”

“You don’t think he was?”

“I don’t know. How should I know? Maybe he was. I’m just saying that that’s not what he’s saying in this letter, is it? I wouldn’t show it to her, but it’s up to you,” she said.

“I think it shows love. But perhaps not that kind of love… She ignited his… his creative zeal. She was his muse, for a while. A long while. But this Dennis… he never mentions him. And when I showed Dimity one of these pictures of him, she said she’d never seen him before, and didn’t know who he was. It just strikes me as… very odd.”

“Aubrey was only here two or three months of the year, you know. This young man could be someone he met during any one of the remaining ten months, somewhere other than here…” She trailed off as Zach shook his head.

“Look at the dates. July 1937; then February and August 1939. We know Aubrey was here in July 1937, in London in February 1939, and here and in Morocco in August 1939. So, did this Dennis travel with him? From Blacknowle, or from London? Surely if Aubrey knew him well enough to take him on holiday, there’d be mention of him somewhere? But that’s not the only weird thing. These three pictures all came from an anonymous collection in Dorset. All from the same seller. But I don’t think… I don’t think they’re by Charles Aubrey. There’s something just not quite right about them.” He slid them towards Hannah, but she barely glanced at them. A tiny frown had appeared between her brows. She pushed the catalogs away from her.

“Does it really matter?” she said.

“Does it matter?” Zach echoed, louder than he’d intended. He realized he was definitely quite drunk. “Of course it does,” he said, more quietly. “Wouldn’t Dimity know? Shouldn’t she know who this Dennis is, if these drawings were done by Aubrey here in Blacknowle? She says she spent as much time as she could with him and his family…”

“But that doesn’t mean she was there all the time, or that she knew everything he was doing. She was just a kid, remember?”

“Yes, but…”

“And if you don’t think Charles Aubrey drew these, who do you think did? You think they’re forgeries?” she asked lightly.

“They could be. And yet… and yet, the shading, the draftsmanship…” He trailed off, bewildered. Hannah seemed to think hard, and tapped her fingernails on the page of one of the catalogs for a moment; a rapid little staccato that, just for a second, betrayed some kind of agitation. Then she stopped, and curled the hand into a loose fist when Zach spoke again. “I think,” he said, still lost in thought, “I think these pictures were here, in Blacknowle, before they were sold. And I think there could be more of them.”

“That’s a big theory. You mean Dimity, I take it? You think Mitzy Hatcher is a skilled enough artist to forge Aubrey works so that they could pass as genuine?”

“Well, maybe not. Aubrey must have given her the pictures, then… or perhaps she took them for herself. That would explain why she’s so cagey about certain things…”

“Come on, Zach. Mitzy? Little old Mitzy with the dowager’s hump? Does she really live like someone with a hidden stash of priceless artworks?”

“Well, no, not at all. But if she really needed the money, she might have started to sell a few of them… she’d be reluctant to, of course. She would want to keep anything with connections to him.”

“And she just nips out and takes them up to London from time to time, and makes thousands?”

“Well…” Zach struggled. “When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound too probable. But she could phone the auction house and get them to send a courier for them, or something.”

“It doesn’t sound probable because it’s wholly improbable. She doesn’t even have a phone, Zach. And there are loads of big houses tucked away around here-any one of them would be far more likely to have an art collection like that. What makes you even think they’re in Blacknowle?”

“It was… kind of just a hunch.”

“Or wishful thinking, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” said Zach, deflated.

“You know what I think?” she said.

“What?”

“I think you should stop chewing it over for now and drink more of the Spout Lantern’s finest.” She raised her glass to salute him before downing the last of her own. Zach smiled woozily at her.

“Just what is a spout lantern, anyway?” he said. Hannah turned in her seat and pointed up at a rusty metal object on a high shelf, amid green glass floats and old fishing nets, and he recognized it as the kind of distorted watering can that was on the pub’s sign.

“Smuggler’s lamp,” she explained. “There’s a little oil lamp in the main body of it, but the light is only visible if you’re standing directly in front of the spout. A single beam of light, great for signaling and guiding a boat ashore…”

“I see, like a laser beam, eighteenth-century style.”

“Precisely. So, tell me something about the wider world. I don’t get out much,” Hannah said with a smile.

They talked for a while about the gallery and about Elise, and touched lightly on the subject of missing spouses, although Hannah would not be drawn to talk about her husband other than to give his name as Toby. She paused after she said it, as if that single word had the power to rob her of speech. Zach wondered if his body had been recovered, or if he was lost at sea, washed away like so many before him. He had a sudden idea that chilled him. That when Hannah swam, she was looking for him. He remembered the way she had dived, again and again, swimming as much below the surface as above it. He sensed that she was determined enough, resolute enough for this. Strong enough to keep searching, years later, for something she’d lost beneath the waves.

“Do you swim in winter? In the sea, I mean?” he asked.

“Talk about your non sequitur. Yes. I swim all year round. It’s good for you, clears out all the junk.” She looked at him curiously. “In case you’re picturing it, I have a wetsuit for the winter months.” Her tone was wry.

“No! No, I wasn’t picturing it. I… Good idea, though-a wetsuit. Must be freezing otherwise.”

“It’d make your bollocks jump right back up inside your body,” she said dolefully, then grinned. “Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that.” They laughed, rather drunkenly.

“Hannah, have you ever seen anyone else at Dimity’s place? I’ve heard these odd noises, coming from upstairs,” said Zach. She stopped laughing at once, as suddenly as hitting a brick wall. She stared into her glass for a moment, and Zach retraced his verbal steps, trying to work out what he’d said wrong.

“No. No, as far as I know, nobody else ever goes there,” Hannah said. There was an uneasy pause, then she stood up unsteadily. “I should really be getting back. Things to do, you know. Down on the farm.”

“What can you do after all that beer? Stay and finish your pint at least. We don’t have to talk about…” But he trailed off as Hannah turned to go. She looked back, and her delicate features were serious now, and steady. Her eyes looked sharp, not drunk at all, and Zach felt like a fool.

“Come down to the farm, if you want to, another day. I’ll show you around. If you’re interested, that is.” She shrugged one shoulder and walked away, leaving Zach with the beer she’d been drinking and her empty seat, and a sudden, unexpected sense of loss at her absence. Pete appeared and gathered up the empty glasses.

“You look a bit green around the gills.” He shook his head incredulously. “It’s a foolish man that tries to outdrink Hannah Brock. What did you say to her to make her march off like that? Usually once she’s had two pints she’s here till closing time.”

“I don’t know. I really don’t,” said Zach, mystified.

Towards the end of that first summer, Dimity began to daydream about going with the Aubreys to the harvest home, when there would be a huge fête on the village green after the church service; a band and bunting and songs and games. Apple pies that smelled divine. Wilf Coulson had fetched one for her the year before, bringing it to where she was hiding behind a tent, enveloped in the heady, exciting smell of canvas-a once-a-year smell of something different, something fun. Dimity told Delphine all about it, and only left out the fact that she had always longed to be able to explore the fête just like everyone else-to buy a hop garland and play all the games, like skittles, splat the rat, the coconut shy-rather than watching from a hidden place.

Valentina never went to the harvest home; never wanted to go. She curled her lip, sneered at the idea. I’ve no need to watch them play merry-go-bloody-rounds, like they’re all so good and wholesome. Every year she made Dimity spend some time circulating with a tray hanging around her neck, selling posies and charms and tonics. Valentina’s famous Gypsy beauty balm, guaranteed to halt the signs of aging-a sticky mix of lard and cold cream, scented with elderflowers and infused with red dock root for its regenerative properties; or her Romany balm, an arcane brew of the fat from a pig’s kidney, horse hoof clippings, house leek, and elder bark, known to cure any kind of skin complaint, boil, or bruise. The village kids all followed Dimity, calling her names and throwing nuggets of dung, knowing that she couldn’t chase or fight back, not with the heavy tray swinging in front of her. But the Aubreys weren’t afraid of the people of Blacknowle, even if people did whisper that Celeste was his mistress, not his wife; even if they did put their noses up slightly and pretend to disapprove. People still accepted them, and were polite to them. They couldn’t help themselves. Charles was too charming, and Celeste too beautiful; and their daughters were so safe and happy that they didn’t even notice it when the publican’s wife’s lips pinched up the way they did. So this year would be different, because Dimity would be with the Aubreys, and they would shield her.

She was plucking two pigeons when this daydream evaporated, pulling out the feathers a pinch at a time, her fingers moving slowly so she wouldn’t finish before Charles had done his drawing. She sat facing him, cross-legged, with the dead birds in her lap. She’d tied her hair back, but she knew there were still tiny feathers caught up in it. She could see one, hovering at the edge of her vision, up above her eyebrows. A tiny gray feather that trembled in the still air. When she looked up at it, she could snatch a look at Charles too. The intensity of his gaze frightened her at first. He sometimes looked so stern that she expected to be scolded. But gradually she realized that he wasn’t even aware of her gaze. She let her eyes linger on his face, fascinated. A deep crease marked the bridge of his nose, and as the sun sank west, that nose threw a dark, pointed shadow onto his cheek. The cheek had a slight hollow below the ridge of bone around his eye, making a steep line to his jaw, which was long and angular. Studying it like this, Dimity came to know his face every bit as well, perhaps even better, than she knew her own; than she knew Delphine’s, or Valentina’s. There were few times when it was acceptable, or possible, to examine someone for such a length of time.

She fell into a kind of trance as the sun came around to the side of them, creeping slowly, silently, until it lit Charles’s right eye and made the iris flare with bright browns and golden tones. Like a jewel of some kind, or a precious metal. Behind him the sea was a silvery blur, and the short turf she was sitting on was soft and springy; the sky was a vast dome of chalky blue studded with gulls like the daisies on a lawn. Dimity’s fingers went still, stopped plucking, because she didn’t want the world to turn anymore, or time to move on from that exact moment. Warm and still, with Charles’s topaz eyes fixed upon her, and Delphine digging her little vegetable patch behind her, and Celeste cooking with Élodie-something that she could just about smell on the air, drifting towards them. Something savory and delicious, something she would be asked to share.

But she wasn’t, in the end. Celeste came out with a piece of pie wrapped up in tough brown paper, wearing one of her long dresses again, a pale cream color with long, swinging sleeves, belted in at the waist with a plaited cord. She smiled her wide, lovely smile at Dimity, then ruined everything.

“Time for you to go home now, Mitzy.” She walked around behind Charles, let her hand rub his shoulder and stay to rest there. Dimity blinked.

“Am… am I not to stay for supper then?” she asked. Charles put up a hand to rub his eyes, as if he, too, were waking from a dream. How perfect it had been, Dimity thought sadly. How perfect.

“Well, we leave for London tomorrow, so I think tonight we shall be just family, the four of us. On our last night.” Celeste’s smile faded as chagrin bloomed across Dimity’s face.

“You’re leaving… tomorrow?” she said. Just family. “But I don’t want you to,” she said, the words coming out louder and wilder than she’d intended. She took a deep breath, and it hurt her chest.

“Well, we must. The girls must go back to school soon. Delphine! Come and say good-bye to Mitzy!” Celeste called to her elder daughter, who stood up, wiped her hands on the seat of her slacks, and came over to them. Stiffly, Dimity struggled to her feet. She was breathing quickly, and for the first time in weeks, she didn’t know how to behave with them. She couldn’t look up; kept her eyes fixed on the grass and saw that it was peppered with rabbit shit.

“Can’t she stay for dinner? It is the last night, after all,” said Delphine, squinting up at her mother.

“Because it is the last night, I’m afraid not. Say good-bye now,” said Celeste. Charles handed Dimity the coins that made up her sitter’s fee for Valentina, and brushed his knuckles lightly against her shoulder.

“Thank you, Mitzy,” he said, smiling softly. Celeste pressed the packet of pie into her hands, and Dimity felt the warmth of it through the paper. She felt like throwing it back at her. Throwing the money at Charles, throwing a curse at Delphine. Something was building up inside her, gathering strength. She didn’t know what it was, except that she didn’t trust it, so even as Delphine was talking, she turned on her heel and fled.

Dimity stayed out very late, sitting in the thick hedgerow that enclosed the track to The Watch as the blackbirds’ resonant song gradually petered out, and the sun buried itself behind the swell of the land. An invisible fist had clenched itself around her throat, and there was a stone in her gut. A stone of dread, at the thought of waking up the next morning and knowing that they were gone. She hadn’t even asked if they would be back the next year; hadn’t dared to ask, in case the answer was no. Having them there, having their company, even petulant Élodie, had made everything else more bearable. She cried for a long time, because being left behind felt a little like being laughed at in the schoolroom; like having stones thrown; like waiting in the dark for someone to notice her. A little like all of those things, but worse. Eventually she got up, walked down to the front door, and let herself in. She had the pie and the plucked pigeons to placate Valentina, not to mention the shillings, and the scolding she got was a routine one. Valentina even took her by the shoulders afterwards, fingers digging in, and ran narrowed eyes over her daughter.

“You’ve feathers in your hair, little dicky bird,” she said, patting Dimity’s cheek in what was as close as she ever came to a display of affection. Somehow this only made things worse, and Dimity went off to find a comb with tears hot and blurry in her eyes once more.

Zach woke up the morning after his boozy lunch to thoughts of Hannah; of her quick, impulsive face and the way it had closed off when he’d asked about the noises upstairs at The Watch. He drank two cups of coffee in quick succession and decided to take her up on the offer of a tour of the farm. On a whim, he picked up his bag of art supplies on his way out. However pleased he’d been to buy them, he’d remained reluctant, as yet, to use them. It had rained hard in the night, hard enough to wake him with the sound of it fretting at the windowpane. Zach’s shoes were soon filthy, as he walked inland for a while instead of heading directly towards Southern Farm. The cool breeze felt good on his face and in his lungs, clearing his head and making his limbs feel lighter.

He climbed a steep hill to the copse at its summit. There he turned, and was welcomed by a wide, sweeping view of the coast as it rolled for miles in either direction. A blurred patchwork of green and yellow and gray, sharply delineated by the contrasting color of the sea. Below him, Blacknowle was toy houses; The Watch a white speck; Southern Farm invisible behind a dip in the land. He perched on the leathery trunk of a fallen beech and took out his sketchpad. Just draw a line. Just start. Drawing had once emptied his mind for him, cleared out all the things clamoring for his attention and let him see a way ahead. Reassured by his own talent, in this thing that he was able to do. At Goldsmiths, his tutors had always urged him to draw and paint more; to be true to his abilities rather than rebel against them. At the time, he’d been too caught up in appearances to heed their advice.

Zach drew a line; the horizon. He stopped. How could he have got it wrong? The horizon was a line-a straight one; bright with light, immobile. The line he had drawn was straight, gentle. And yet it was wrong. He stared at it, trying to work out why, and eventually decided that he had put it too high up the page. The picture would be unbalanced-there should be an even split between land and water and sky; a pleasing trio, layered one after the other with satisfying natural rhythm, and by putting the horizon where he had, he’d cramped the sky, robbed it of all sense of space and volume. With one single pencil line, he had ruined the drawing. Shutting his sketchbook in disgust, Zach set off for Southern Farm.

Hannah was in one of the fields near the lane, climbing out of her jeep and opening up the tailgate. A small flock of cappuccino-colored sheep puttered at her heels, clearly eager for whatever she was bringing them. They all had thin, ridged horns curling back from their heads, which clattered together as they crowded in. Zach waved, and with a high sweep of her arm Hannah beckoned him in, so he climbed the gate and went over to her, dodging piles of fresh sheep shit. She was lifting slices of hay out of the jeep and strewing it into wire mangers. On the backseat of the jeep, a gray-and-white border collie was watching the flock, ears pricked and eyes alight.

“Good morning. Is now a good time for that tour you promised me?” he said, as he reached her.

“Sure. Just let me get this lot fed, and I’m all yours.” Hannah gave him a quick, appraising glance that made him feel slightly conspicuous; an odd, long-absent flutter of nerves. Then she grinned at him.

“How was your head this morning?” she asked.

“Rotten, thanks to you,” he said.

“Not my fault. How could I have forced you to drink if you didn’t want to? I’m just a tiny little woman,” she said archly.

“Somehow I doubt you’ve ever had much trouble getting people to do what you want them to.”

“Well, depends on the person. And on what I want them to do,” she said, shrugging slightly.

There was a pause as she went back to the jeep for more hay.

“I thought sheep only needed hay in the winter?” said Zach.

“Then, too. But there’s not much grass left for them at this time of year, and these ladies will be lambing soon, so they need plenty of sustenance.” There was hay in Hannah’s hair, and all over her sweater. Tight gray jeans, smudged with grime.

“I thought lambs came in spring.”

“They usually do, unless you give the ewes hormones to shift their cycle. But these girls are Portlands. An old, rare breed-they can lamb pretty much whenever you like. That way you can get organic lamb ready for spring, when people bizarrely expect to see brand-new lambs out gamboling in fields full of buttercups and also to have six-month-old lamb ready for their Easter roast at the same time,” she said. Zach helped her right one of the mangers, which had gotten knocked over onto its side. It left mud and sheep manure on his hands.

“Yuck,” he said absently, holding his fingers splayed in front of him and trying to think where he could wipe them. Hannah glanced at him and grinned.

“You’re a real man of the land, aren’t you?” she said. “Bet you don’t notice when your hands are covered in paint.”

“Paint doesn’t come out of a sheep’s arse,” Zach pointed out.

“Oh, it’s only half-digested grass. There are far worse chemicals in paint. Here, use this.” She handed him a twist of hay from the back of the jeep, and he wiped his hands on it gratefully. “Come on, hop in. I’ll rush you to some hot water and soap.” They climbed into the car and she knocked it into gear, pulling away with a slither and spin of mud from the wheels. “So it begins. Season of mud and cold water,” she muttered. “I hate winter.”

“It’s still only September.”

“I know. But it’s all downhill from here.”

“So the farm’s organic, is it?” said Zach.

“It is. It will be, if I can ever get through the testing and certification process.”

“Long-winded?”

“Unbelievable. Everything has to be organic and proven and tested-from the veterinary treatment they get, to the hay, to the way I treat the hides after slaughter. It costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds every year to keep it up-just to be a member of the right organizations, and have the right checks done at the right times. But come the spring, there should be lamb in the chiller, ready to send out; fully tanned sheepskins ready to sell; and a website where you can actually order things, rather than just look at nice pictures of Portland sheep.” She paused, hopping out of the jeep to shut a gate behind them. They crossed a chalk track, the smooth surface of it sliding like glue after the rain. “Either that or I’ll have gone bust and be living in a trailer in a junk yard somewhere,” she said with forced jollity.

“So why bother with the whole organic thing? Why not just grow a load of sheep as cheaply as you can?”

“Because it doesn’t work. That’s what my father did, all his life. But however cheaply I can raise a sheep, the price I’d have to sell it at would be too low to make a living. I haven’t got enough land to raise a huge flock. And I haven’t got enough help to run things on such a scale. The only chance to keep the place running is to specialize. Do something different, get a name for excellence in one particular thing.”

“Organic Portland lamb?”

“Exactly. And not just spring lamb, old-season lamb-and the mutton is excellent, too. Very lean, full of flavor. And the fleeces from the shearlings are softer than a baby’s bum. But…” She tipped her head to one side, and in spite of the airy way she spoke, there was anxiety around her eyes.

“But?”

“I have to survive the winter, until this first crop of lambs are old enough to slaughter. And I have to get the bloody organic certificate in place, like yesterday.”

“So you’re right at the beginning of this whole venture, really.”

“Either the beginning or the end, depending on how optimistic I happen to be feeling that day,” she said, with a quick smile. “Toby and I tried to work the old flock-we tried for five years to scrape by with it. I sold the last of them the year he died. Then it took me a while to work out what the hell I was doing.”

“But you’ve figured it out now, by the sounds of it.”

“Well, Ilir came along. Not much use having a man about the place when there was no livestock and nothing to do but watch the place crumble. He kind of gave me the boot up the behind that I needed.”

“Yes. Important for a man to be useful,” Zach said quietly, feeling a flare of pointless hostility towards the blameless Ilir.

The jeep bounced and slithered up the track onto the concrete yard, and this time Zach was quick enough to get out to open and close the gate before Hannah could. She roared the engine to a halt outside the farmhouse and opened the front door for him with a heave of her shoulder and a kick to the bottom edge of it.

“The cloakroom’s the first door on the right. And if you say one word about my housekeeping I’ll knock you down, just see if I don’t,” she said. The inside of the farmhouse was filthy. Not just untidy, not just in need of vacuuming. Properly filthy. Zach picked his way over mounds of discarded rags, bits of rope and baling twine, wisps of straw, empty milk bottles, and odd implements the function of which he couldn’t begin to guess. There was a plastic dog bed that had been chewed into a strange, stippled sculpture; the blanket inside gray with accumulated hair. A log pile against one wall had shed a wide halo of sawdust and bark and dead woodlice all over the floor, and when Zach looked up in horror, the high ceiling was strung about with blackened cobwebs like some kind of macabre bunting. The basin in the cloakroom had the cracked, half-dissolved remains of several bars of soap slumped around the taps, but the water was hot and he managed to scrape some soap from the heap with his fingernails. He washed his hands quickly, then glanced along the corridor to the next room.

The kitchen-every bit as ripe with sheep and dog as the inside of the jeep had been. A tabby cat was asleep on the range cooker; every surface was covered in plates, pans, and packaging. A bottle of milk had been left out by the kettle, and a housefly was feasting on the yellow crust around its lip. A vast oak refectory table was piled high with accounts, printouts, ledgers, and old newspapers. Zach looked at the dirty crockery for a while, and only moments later realized what he was looking for, and what he was indeed seeing: pairs of things. Two wineglasses with purple stains at the bottom, two coffee mugs, two plates with the bones of what might have been pork chops on them. Evidence that Ilir shared the house with Hannah. There was a sudden bang and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs at the far end of the room. Zach’s pulse gave a lurch and he turned on his heel, dodging back along the corridor as fast as he could, and out into the yard.

Hannah was looking at something on the hood of the jeep, and the way she jumped reminded Zach of himself, seconds earlier. She’d been looking through his sketchbook, and now she closed it with a defiant expression and a tilt of her chin, as if refusing to be embarrassed at being caught out.

“Find everything you needed?” she said. Zach folded his arms and smiled, glancing at his sketchbook on the bonnet.

“Yes, thanks. Lovely house.”

“Thanks. I grew up in that house.”

“You must have an incredible immune system,” he said, and struggled to keep a straight face.

“Careful, now. I did warn you.” Hannah balled her fists for a second, but her expression was amused. She gestured at his sketchbook. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just didn’t want you to leave your bag behind in the jeep. And, you know… the curiosity of a fellow artist and all that… But don’t worry-I don’t really feel like I’ve seen into your soul,” she said. He thought of the only drawing he’d done so far-his failed attempt earlier that morning.

“I was trying to draw the view from the top of the hill,” he admitted.

“And that’s as far as you got?”

“I think I may have… lost my mojo,” he said. She looked at him shrewdly, eyes screwed up against a sudden flare of sunshine.

“Is that so?” she murmured, not unkindly. Zach held his ground, but could think of no succinct way to elaborate. “Well, I always think it helps to remember why you’re drawing the thing you’re drawing. Why did you climb the hill and try to draw the view, for example?”

“Um… I don’t really know. Because it was beautiful?”

“But was it? Did you decide to draw it because it was beautiful, or because you thought it ought to be? Because you thought it was the sort of thing you should want to draw?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Stop to ask yourself next time. You might not get the answer you thought you would.”

“I’m not sure I know what I want to draw anymore.”

“Then perhaps try to think about why as well. Or, in other words, who. Think about who you’re drawing it for. That might help,” she suggested.

“Why did you run out on me the other day?” he asked, surprising himself. Hannah handed Zach’s sketchbook back to him with a cautious smile.

“I didn’t run out.”

“Come on. Yes, you did. It was when I asked about there being anybody else at The Watch.”

“No, no, I just had to get on, that was all. Really. There’s nobody else at The Watch. I know that much for a fact.”

“Have you been upstairs there?”

“Hey-I thought you wanted a tour of the farm, not to quiz me about my neighbors.” She started to turn away, but Zach put out his hand and caught her arm. He dropped it again at once, startled by the thinness of the limb beneath the fabric of her shirt. The warmth of it.

“Please,” he said. “I was so sure I’d heard somebody moving around up there.”

Hannah seemed to consider carefully before answering.

“I’ve been upstairs. And there’s nobody else living there,” she said. “Now, do you want the tour or don’t you?” She eyed him sternly for a moment, arching her brows, but somehow even her fiercest expressions brought a smile to his lips.

The winter months were a blur of aching fingers and numb, stiffened toes. Dimity had heavy boots, the leather of which was rigid with age and the damage done by winter weather. They were too big for her-they’d been left at The Watch by a visitor, one who had exited swiftly by the back door as the sound of his wife’s fist on the front door reverberated through the cottage. He never came back for them, so now the boots were Dimity’s. But her socks had worn through at toe and heel, and her repairs rarely lasted longer than a few days. She could feel the gritty innards of the boots through these holes when she walked; they caused blisters to form, then calluses. When she met Wilf Coulson in Barton’s hayloft, she would sink down into the loose hay and pull the boots off, rubbing her toes with her hands, massaging heat and movement back into them as best she could.

“I’ll do that, if you want. My hands are warmer,” Wilf offered one time, when rain was falling outside in straight rods of chilly gray. Barton kept his cattle in the barn when the weather was as wet as it had been. His fields drained badly, and were churned to an impassable quagmire otherwise. The heat from the cows rose up to infuse the hayloft, along with the sweet, shitty stink of them. Half sunk in the hay, it was possible to feel warm at a time when it seemed like the sun would stay weak and wan forever.

“It tickles when you do it,” said Dimity, snatching her feet away from his bony hands. She and Wilf were fifteen by then, and he seemed to grow even while she watched him. He was still thin, but his shoulders were wider, sharply angular; his face was longer, more serious, heavier across the brows. When he spoke, his voice wavered between a soft tenor and a hoarse, ragged squeak.

“Let me try,” he insisted. He took her feet firmly, and she was embarrassed by the dampness of her stringy socks, and the unwashed smell coming from them-imprinted there by the boots’ previous owner. Wilf clamped her chilly toes between the palms of his hands and for a blissful moment she felt the heat of him flood into them. She shut her eyes for a second, listening to the rain hammering on the tin roof, and beneath that the shifting and breathing of the cows. She and Wilf were out of sight, out of earshot. Untouchable.

When she opened her eyes, Wilf was looking at her that way. It was appearing more and more frequently, this look of his-intent and serious, mouth a little open. At once vulnerable and threatening, somehow, and in his lap the strain of trouser fabric across the bulge at his crotch. Dimity scowled and snatched her foot away again.

“And what’d your mother say, if she caught you up here with me, then?” she demanded. Wilf frowned and looked down through the barn doors, as if he half expected Ma Coulson to appear on the boggy, rutted mud of the threshold, amid puddles the color of tea and pocked by the rain, with her face every bit as grim.

“She’d box my ears and no mistake. No matter that I’m half a head taller than her already,” he said sullenly. “She gets crosser every week that passes, my ma.”

“And mine. Last week she belted me one for leaving shit on the eggs when I brought them into the house-never mind that there was hail coming down outside fit to smash them all before I could wipe them.”

“Shame they can’t be friends. Or at least meet up and box each other’s ears instead of ours.”

“Who do you think would win?” Dimity asked, rolling onto her side and smiling.

“My ma’s not afraid to use a stick, if she has to. You should’ve seen the state of our Brian’s behind when she caught him stealing from her purse!”

“Valentina would use whatever she could set her hands on,” Dimity said, falling serious, no longer liking the image of the two women fighting. “I do think she would kill a person, if they caught her at the wrong moment.” Wilf laughed and threw a handful of hay at her, which Dimity swatted aside crossly. “I mean it! She would as well.”

“If she laid a hand on you, I would have words with her. No-I would!” Now it was Wilf’s turn to insist, when Dimity laughed.

“You would not, for she does lay hands on me, regular as the tide, as you well know. But I don’t blame you for it, Wilf Coulson. If I could steer a course right around her, good and wide, I would. When I’m old enough, I will.” She rolled onto her back and held a stalk of hay up in front of her eyes, knotting it as carefully as she could without breaking it.

“Would you marry, then, Mitzy? To be away from her? You could soon enough. If you wanted to. Then you’d never have to go back there again, if you didn’t want.” Wilf’s voice was so laden with casual curiosity that it shook with the strain.

“Marry? Maybe.” Dimity pulled the knot tighter with a sudden jerk; snapped the stem and threw it to one side. Suddenly, the future rolled out in front of her like a long, unsettling thunderclap. A future that seemed to suffocate her. Her stomach twisted beneath her ribs, and she realized she was afraid. Horribly afraid. She swallowed, determined not to let it show. “Depends if I meet anybody worthy of marrying, I suppose, don’t it?” she said lightly. There was a long pause. Wilf fiddled with the waistband of his trousers, and his shirt beneath his sweater, which had come untucked.

“I’d marry you,” he muttered. Words pitched so low that the sound of the rain almost swallowed them.

“What?”

“I said, I’d marry you. If you wanted to. Ma’d come around once she got to know you. Once you weren’t living down at The Watch no more.”

“Shut up, Wilf-don’t talk like an idiot,” said Dimity, to hide her confusion. Better to laugh, better not to take it seriously, in case it proved to be mockery of some kind. A trick, which she did not think Wilf would play, but still could not be sure. Her heart was banging so loudly she was glad of the roaring overhead to hide it.

“I wasn’t. I wasn’t talking like an idiot,” Wilf mumbled, still examining his clothes, his hands, then gazing across the barn as if the far flint wall, smeared with manure, held some vast and crucial wisdom. Neither of them spoke for some time, and neither could have guessed the other’s thoughts. Eventually the warmth and the steady racket lulled Dimity into a doze, and when she woke a while later, Wilf’s head was on her shoulder, one hand resting lightly on her stomach. His eyes were shut but she could sense, somehow, that he was not asleep.

That winter was long, with late snows driving in on bitter north winds, killing off the first green shoots that had dared to show themselves. Dimity’s chilblains got so bad that she could hardly stand it; she was forced to sit, shuddering in disgust, with her feet in a basin of piss to cure them. She had a stabbing pain in her ears where the frigid air had seeped into them. There were hardly any visitors, except the two men that Valentina called her bread and butter, and so fewer gifts of food or coins; no sitter’s fees earned by Dimity, and far less for her to find, out foraging. They ate the eggs fried in old dripping that tasted bitter and burned from reuse, on slices of bread that Valentina made herself-she had a rare skill with dough. Dimity thought it was the anger with which she kneaded it. They were both tired, and their skin grew sallow and chapped. Dimity came home from delivering cold remedies to the people of Blacknowle with her lips cracked by the wind, and her fingers curled into reddened claws.

In those deadened days, Valentina kept to her bed, vague and listless. There was a knock at the door late one evening, but she wouldn’t come down. Dimity peeped out around the door in the end, because the man wouldn’t stop knocking. She didn’t recognize him. His face was dark, pitted, and lined, with ragged black stubble all over his cheeks. His eyes were watery and gray.

“What about you? You’ll do. I was told this was the place to come,” he said, in a hoarse, reedy voice, when Dimity told him Valentina wasn’t available for guests. She stared at him in shock, frozen.

“No, sir. Not tonight,” she said softly. But he gave the door a shove, caught her around the waist, and pushed against her with all his strength, pinning her with the door frame biting into her back. He dropped one hand down, ground it hard between her legs.

“Not tonight, she says? Filthy teasing harlot… Come on, the apple never falls far from the tree,” he rasped into her face, and Dimity cried out in fear and surprise. His breath reeked of fish and beer.

“Ma!” she shouted out in panic. “Ma!” And, against all odds, Valentina appeared on the stairs, her face clogged with sleep but such a fire of rage in her eyes that the man put Dimity down and was already backing away when she fell on him, raining blows and hurling curses that would shock a sailor. The stranger scurried away up the track, muttering furiously all the way.

Afterwards they lay down together, in Valentina’s bed. Dimity wasn’t usually allowed into her room, with its veiled lamps and pink candlewick bedspread, but that night they lay down and Valentina wrapped herself around her daughter, lying close like two spoons. She didn’t stroke her hair, or sing, or speak. But when she saw that Dimity’s hands were shaking, she clasped one in her own hand, tightly, and didn’t relax her grip even when she fell asleep. The skin of her palm was tough and smooth, like leather. Dimity stayed awake for hours, her heart still bumping from the shock of the man’s rough touch, and from the alien unfamiliarity of Valentina’s embrace. She welcomed it, though, enjoying the warmth that grew between their two bodies, the feeling of safety married so uneasily with the knowledge that it all might end at any second. Which it did, come morning. Valentina woke her abruptly, with a slap on the thigh. Get out of my bed, you useless lump. Go and make breakfast.

Then, on a glorious day in mid-April, spring blew in off the sea on a warm breeze as sweet as the taste of ripe strawberries. Such a blessed relief that Dimity laughed, out loud and all alone, standing on the cliff path on the way back from Lulworth with a bag full of sprats and a bottle of cider vinegar in which to cook them. The sea shimmered with life and the land looked up at it, like some great animal befuddled by the cold, slowly coming out of deep sleep. Dimity thought she could hear the sap rising, fizzing up into the trees and the grass like a massive inward breath, held, poised for the flourish of summer. Sap rose in the men of Blacknowle and its surrounding farms, too, and sent them to knock on the door of The Watch, so that suddenly the residents of that cottage were surrounded by abundance. But it wasn’t the food or the warmth that Dimity yearned for the most. Even the welcome touch of the sunshine couldn’t fill the space in the world that the Aubreys had left when they departed. Dimity longed for the summer because she longed for them to come back. She longed for their bright chatter and their affection, the way their love for each other spread out around them, and the way she had been allowed to step into that world, and be part of it. She longed to see them, so that she wouldn’t be invisible anymore.