A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER FIVE

Dimity blinked, and hummed a little in her throat, and Zach roused himself from reverie. The silence had grown so long as she’d studied the picture that his attention had wandered, and he’d let himself notice the isolated grains of sand on the floor, glinting in a shaft of sunlight; the gentle sound of the sea coming down the chimney with a faint, tunneling echo to it; a huge, thin spider sitting as still as an etching between the beams above his head, surrounded by the tiny, speckled cloud of her young. In the old woman’s hand was a piece of paper, a color printout Zach had made, borrowing Pete Murray’s computer, of a large oil canvas of Mitzy standing amid mossy ruins, so highly textured by the dappled light that she seemed a part of the forest, a part of the land, like some mythical creature merging with the hues and foliage around her. There was a gargoyle above her head, distorted and ill-defined, but it seemed to have her face; an echo in stone of the same lovely girl standing beneath it. Dimity’s mouth moved again and this time words almost formed, so Zach cleared his throat.

“Dimity? Are you all right?”

“He did so many sketches, up at that chapel. That’s Saint Gabriel’s chapel, the haunted one. He couldn’t decide what was best, how I should stand. For three weeks we walked to and fro, to and fro. We trod the path up the hill deeper than it ever had been, I reckon. One day I got so tired, standing still for so long, and with my belly rumbling as I’d had no time for breakfast-he wanted the early morning light, he said-that my head started spinning and everything wobbled in my ears and the light went dark, and before I knew what was what I was on the ground and he was cradling my head, my Charles, like I was a precious thing…”

“You fainted?”

“Dead away. I reckon he was half annoyed at me for moving for a moment, till he realized I’d swooned!” She laughed a little, rocking back in her chair, clasping her hands together and raising them up. The paper flapped like a solitary wing. Zach smiled and fingered the notebook across his knees.

“That was in 1938, is that right? The year before he went off to the war.”

“Yes. That year… I think that was my happiest time…” Her words faded to a whisper, then to nothing. Her eyes shone for a moment, frozen and still. She dropped the printout of the painting and her fingers went to the ends of her long plait, stroking, rolling. “Charles was happy, too. I remember it. I begged him not to go, the year after that… I wanted us to always be that happy…”

“It must have been hard… with such a recent death in the family, and under such tragic circumstances. So much upheaval,” said Zach. For a moment, Dimity didn’t answer, and there was a pause, but instead of her gaze falling into the past, Zach saw rapid thoughts flying across her face. Her mouth fell open slightly, thin lips parting, and she held the tip of her tongue between her front teeth. Keeping it still until the right words were ready.

“It was a… terrible time. For Charles. For all of us. He was going to leave them, you see. Leave her to be with me. And then when it happened, he felt very guilty, you see.”

“But nobody blamed him for what happened, surely?”

“Yes, some did. Some did. Because he was an older man, and me still so young. Young in my body, perhaps, but I had an old soul. I always thought that-even when I was a child, I never felt like one. I think we only stay children if people let us, and nobody let me. There was talk, you see-about sin begetting sin. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. I heard Mrs. Lamb up at the pub say that to him one night, as he was walking past. As though by loving me, he was causing bad things to happen. Bringing punishment on himself. But he was never wed to Celeste, you know. He broke no vows to her, by loving me.”

“I never thought Charles Aubrey would be bothered about what people said about him. He never seemed to mind much the rest of the time. About society, and convention, I mean.” At this Dimity frowned, and looked down at her fingertips, the split wisps of her hair. Zach saw her draw in a long breath, as if to steady herself.

“No. He was a free man, truly. Guided only by his heart.”

“And yet… I’ve always been bewildered by his decision to go off to the war,” said Zach. “He was an ideological pacifist, after all, and he still had responsibilities. People who needed him-like you, and Delphine… Do you know why he went? Did he ever explain it to you?”

Dimity appeared unsure how to answer him, and though it seemed for a while that she would, in the end the silence stretched and her face grew anxious, suffused with all the mute desperation of a child at the front of the class who has been told she may not sit until the equation is solved.

“He went off to war because…” Tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes. Shocked, Zach stayed silent. “I don’t know why! I’ve never known. I’d have done anything to keep him here with me, anything he asked. And everything I did, I did for him. Everything. Even… even…” She shook her head. “But he was in London when he went, when he joined the army. He went from London, not from here, so I didn’t get a chance to stop him. And… I never told her!”

“Never told who, Dimity?”

“Delphine! I never told her that… that it wasn’t her fault!”

“That what wasn’t her fault? Dimity, I don’t understand… it was Delphine’s fault that he went to war?”

“No! No, it was…” She broke off, tears making the words thick and unintelligible. Zach reached over to her and took her hands.

“Dimity, I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to upset you, really. Please, forgive me.” He squeezed her hands to distract her, but she kept her face turned to the floor, with tears running down the creases in her skin to gather along her jaw. She rocked herself a little, back and forth, and made a quiet keening sound, a sound of such profound sadness that Zach could hardly stand it. “Please don’t cry, Dimity. Please don’t. I’m sorry. Listen, I don’t understand what you’re telling me about Delphine, and about the war. Can you explain it to me?” Gradually, Dimity’s sobbing eased, and she fell still.

“No,” she croaked then. “No more talking. I… can’t. I can’t talk about him dying. And I can’t talk about… about Delphine.” She turned her face to him, and it was raw with emotion. Not just grief, he suddenly saw. He blinked, startled. There was far more there than simple sorrow. It looked for all the world like guilt. “Please go now. I can’t talk any more.”

“All right, I’ll go. And we won’t talk about the war any more. I promise,” said Zach, even though he knew then, he was sure, that Dimity knew far more about what had happened that last summer of Charles Aubrey’s life than she was prepared to tell him. “I’ll go, if you’re sure you’ll be all right? Next time I won’t ask you anything. I’ll answer your questions instead, how about that? You can ask me anything you like about me or my family, and I’ll do my best to answer. Deal?” Wiping at her face, Dimity looked up at him, bewildered but growing calmer. In the end she nodded, and Zach squeezed her hands again before he left, bending to put a kiss on her damp cheek.

Outside, the day was blowy and carried the dusty perfume of gorse flowers. Zach took a deep breath and let it out slowly, only then realizing how tense he had been, how much Dimity’s tears had worried him. He rubbed one hand over his face and shook his head. He had to tread more carefully, be more sensitive; not go blundering in with his questions when it was her life and loss he was asking about, not just some figure from history he had never even met, even if that figure’s blood was running in his veins. He wondered whether he might safely raise the subject of Dennis again-who the young man was, and where the collection that his portraits had come from might be. Zach glanced at his watch and was surprised by how late it was. He had a date with Hannah, and set off towards the beach below Southern Farm to meet her.

Hannah was already on the shore when Zach got there, standing barefoot in the shallows with the hems of her jeans rolled up. She turned and smiled as he approached, folding her arms for warmth.

“I was going to swim, but I can’t decide if I fancy it or not. But now you’re here you can keep me company,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not that warm today, is it?”

“That only makes the sea seem warmer. Trust me.”

“I haven’t got a towel.”

“Diddums.” She gave him a look, appraising and expectant, and Zach had the sudden feeling that he was being tested.

“All right then. I’ve been up at The Watch for the past few hours. I could do with washing that place off my skin.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Nothing specific. It’s just… there seem to be so many pent-up memories there. And not all of them that happy.” He thought of the way sorrow sometimes seemed to sit, stony and cold, in every corner. “Talking to Dimity can be a bit intense.”

“Yes. I suppose it can,” Hannah agreed.

They turned and walked side by side along the shoreline for a while.

“So how are you finding our little corner of Dorset? Not missing the bright lights of Bath?” Hannah asked, flicking stray curls of her hair out of her face where the breeze was playing with it.

“I like it. It’s kind of restful, being surrounded by landscape rather than people.”

“Oh? I had you down as more of a culture vulture than that.” She glanced across at him briefly, and he smiled.

“I am. But as soon as I left London I was stepping back from that way of life, I suppose. London feels like it’s… in my past, now. I studied there; I got married there. I wouldn’t want to live there again. Not after everything that’s happened since. Do you ever feel that? Not wanting to go back to significant places?”

“Not really. All my significant places are here.”

“I suppose that is a bit different. And you never wanted to leave at all-leave where you grew up and try something completely different, somewhere else?”

“No.” She paused. “I know that might not be very fashionable; might not seem very adventurous. But some of us are born with strong roots. And wherever you go, you’re still you, after all. Nobody ever really starts a new life, or anything like that. You take the old one with you. How can you not?”

“And yet I find myself constantly trying. To start over.”

“And has it ever worked? Have you ever found yourself to be any different?”

“No, I suppose not.” He smiled ruefully. “Perhaps you’re just more content with who you are than the rest of us.”

“Or just more resigned to it,” she said, also smiling.

“Still, your roots must be pretty strong, if you didn’t even think of leaving when… when you lost your husband. When you lost Toby.”

Hannah was silent for a while after he said this, and she turned her head to gaze out to sea.

“Toby wasn’t from Blacknowle. He blew into my life for eight great years… and then he blew out again. The farm, and the house, were the only things that kept me anchored when he died. If I’d left then… I’d have lost myself as well,” she said. They had reached the far corner of the beach, and Hannah stopped. She took a deep breath and then pulled her shirt over her head in one clean movement. Zach looked away, tactfully, but not before he’d noticed a scattering of pale freckles descending the bony line between her breasts. “So, are you swimming fully clothed, or what?” She turned to face him in her bikini, hands on hips. Zach felt curiously voyeuristic-strange for it to be acceptable for him to see her like this, outside, when it would be invasive to look at her in her underwear, indoors. He pulled off his top and dropped his jeans. Hannah let a measuring gaze rise from his white feet to the spread of his shoulders; so bold and overt that he almost blushed. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” She smiled fleetingly, turned, and made her way nimbly across the pebbles to the water. Three strides took her knee-deep; then she lunged forwards, dipped her head beneath the swell of a wave, and started swimming.

Zach followed her, cursing under his breath when he felt the cold grip of the sea around his ankles. It seemed to bite, but then Hannah surfaced nearby, skin shining and hair smoothed back, as slick as a seal’s, and the sight of her urged him on. He took a huge breath and dived in, feeling every muscle contract as the water closed over him. He surfaced with a gasp.

“Jesus wept! It’s freezing!” But even as he spoke, the water seemed less shocking, more bearable. He stopped flailing and swam in a small circle till he caught sight of Hannah.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she said. It had been a long time since he’d swum in a British sea, so very different from a warm holiday sea where the water was as clear as a swimming pool, the bottom sandy and featureless. No possible threats, nothing unseen. He put his feet down gingerly, felt rocks and the leathery touch of seaweed, imagined crabs and spiked urchins, things with stinging tentacles. He snatched his feet back up, peering down, but could see his own legs only as a blurry paleness, no more detailed than that. “Swim out a bit more. It gets sandy. Do you see where the water’s breaking over there? Avoid that if you can. Some sharp rocks under there. Come on.” Hannah floated on her back, issuing this steady stream of instructions, and Zach took a breath, ducked under the surface, and kicked hard towards her.

They swam side by side for a while, away from the shore, and the rhythm of it was calming, meditative. Hannah dipped beneath the surface every few strokes, and Zach watched the cloud of her hair, following her down into the heavy water. He swam on, and at one point she surfaced too close to him, with salt in her eyes, blinding her. They collided, and Hannah twisted onto her back, the hard length of her torso touching his as it passed, skin sliding, a lithe and fleeting caress. “Won’t Ilir swim with you?” said Zach.

“No, he’s a big wimp. Scared of the currents.”

“There are currents?”

“Too late to worry about that now! Just stick with me-you’ll be fine. The tide hasn’t turned yet. The chances of you being sucked out to sea are really… not that high.” Hannah smiled, and Zach decided that she was joking. “Here. Watch out-we can climb onto the jetty. Great spot for diving off, sunbathing, and making tourists think you can walk on water.” She scrambled carefully upwards, to stand as Zach had seen her before, on a spar of flat rock about a foot beneath the water, jutting out into the bay. “Even at low tide, the far end of this jetty stays covered, and the water off the end is deep enough for a small boat,” she said. “A couple of hundred years ago, smugglers used it all the time.”

“What did they smuggle?”

“Oh, anything. Wine, brandy, tobacco. Spices. Cloth. Anything easy to carry that they knew they could shift once they got it here. Why do you think Dimity’s cottage is called The Watch?”

“I see.” Zach searched with his toes for footholds in the rock, feeling the bite of barnacle shells as he climbed.

They sat side by side on the edge of the rock platform, and the breeze felt colder where it dried them. The sea flickered reflections in their eyes, under their chins.

“So, is that what you’re doing here in Blacknowle, really? Trying to start over again?” said Hannah. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Not exactly. I mean, I have Elise now. I wish I had her in my everyday life, like before. I wish she wasn’t thousands of miles away, but I’m her dad, and I wouldn’t want to be anybody else. And she is in my everyday life, in a way. I think about her all the time. I suppose I came here because… I needed to know more about who I am. And my family has been connected to this place for generations.”

“Has it?” said Hannah. Zach smiled at her dubious expression.

“Yes. There’s a strong possibility that Charles Aubrey was my grandfather, you see.” Hannah blinked, and a tiny frown appeared between her eyebrows.

“Your grandfather?” she echoed.

“My grandma always claimed to be one of Aubrey’s women. They came here on holiday in 1939, and met Aubrey here. He even put her in a painting. And you know what they say about Charles Aubrey-that he was one of those men who patted the head of every child he passed in the street, just in case it was his.”

“Charles Aubrey’s grandson.” Hannah shook her head slightly, then tipped back her chin and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Just the way things work out sometimes,” she said, offering no further explanation. She thought for a while, resting her chin on her crossed arms. Goose pimples spread up along her narrow thighs. “Do you still love Ali?” she asked eventually.

“No. I love… the memory of her. I love the way things were, in the beginning. Do you still love Toby?”

“Of course.” She shrugged. “But it’s different now.” She pressed her lips together and turned her head to look at him. “Very different.” She shook her head. “God, I’m so used to avoiding any mention of him in front of Ilir that I even find it hard to say his name!”

“Right,” said Zach heavily. “Does it make him uncomfortable, then?”

“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

“What way am I thinking?”

“Ilir always says-his people say-that it’s not right to speak of the dead. That you shouldn’t. It’s like some rigid social code where he’s from.”

“His people?” said Zach. Hannah paused, as though unsure whether to go on.

“Ilir is Roma,” she said.

“You mean he’s a Gypsy?”

“If you like,” she said neutrally. “They don’t have a great name in this country.”

“Where is he from? I’ve been trying to place his accent,” said Zach. Hannah narrowed her amber eyes, and again seemed oddly reluctant to answer.

“Kosovo,” she said shortly. “Ilir was a childhood friend of Toby’s. Well, not really childhood, I guess. Teenage. They met in Mitrovica when Toby’s father was in business over there, before the war started. When the boys were about thirteen, I think. Twelve or thirteen. He came over to help me when he heard Toby had died.”

“And never left?”

“As you see. Not yet, anyway. Ironic, really-the one person in my life who could share memories of Toby with me, and he refuses to.” She gazed away towards the farm for a while, and Zach thought he could see the bond between them, like strands in the air mirroring the currents in the water beneath them. It gave him a sinking feeling.

“Shall we swim? It’s too cold out here,” he said.

“I told you the water was warmer than it looked, didn’t I?” said Hannah, standing up. “Let’s dive.”

“Is it deep enough here?”

“Such a worrier!” She looked down, and gave him a smile. Zach stood up next to her, a full head and shoulders taller, so that she had to tilt her head. She studied him for a moment, in that appraising way he was getting used to. “Come back to the house afterwards, if you want,” she said, watching him steadily.

“What for?” Zach asked. Hannah shrugged one shoulder and dived.

Dimity saw them sitting side by side on the rock jetty like they’d known each other for years. She watched from the kitchen window, and felt something tickling in her stomach. Something that made her clasp her hands there, to hold it; made her shift from foot to foot and turn from time to time, to pace the floor. What were they saying? She wondered about this. The boy had so many questions, all the time, and when she answered them it only made more come. He was insatiable, like that. A hole into which all her stories could pour, and never fill it up. Here’s a robber coming through, coming through, coming through, she sang softly, watching them still. She’d started making a charm for Hannah. Pushing pins through small corks, and working them gradually, painstakingly through the neck of a glass bottle. Something to keep her safe, to put on her hearth or over her door. In case there really was a curse on her, or on the farm-that had been her initial thought. Now she thought: to close her mouth as well. To not let this curious boy pull words from her like he pulled them from Dimity. Here’s a robber coming through, my fair lady. Hannah knew things, bad things. Secrets she must never tell. Because in the end, Dimity could not do everything herself; she had to ask for help sometimes. Young hands and arms, full of the strength that age had stolen.

When she saw him walk along the beach with the girl, she was happy at first. They seemed to match, in spite of the difference in height and the color of their souls. Hannah’s had always been red, but the young man’s was more blue and green and gray. Shifting, not quite knowing what to be. But soon after she felt happy, she felt anxious, then afraid. He stole away my wedding ring, wedding ring, wedding ring… For a second, she almost wished Valentina would come back again. Somebody to hear her thoughts, even if help was beyond her. Valentina had never been a helper; could never muster sympathy. Her heart was a thing of wood and stone, hard minerals. Dimity thought about what she had said to Zach, earlier, when suddenly words and feelings had built up an unbearable pressure inside her. What she had said, and had mercifully not said, even though for a moment the truth had hovered on her lips. The truth could be divided, and given in halves, or smaller fractions. The way saying the sky is not green is not the same as saying that the sky is blue. True, but not the same.

Dimity rubbed the ring finger of her left hand; rubbed it at its base, and thought she felt a callus; hard skin in a ridge between finger and palm. She stole away my wedding ring, my fair lady. Dimity hummed the tune, mumbled the words, did not notice that he had become she. She watched Hannah stand and dive back into the sea; watched the young man do the same. He was a follower, that one. Not sure where he was going, and happy to take direction, as a result. If she was careful, she could lead him where she wanted, and where he thought he wanted. But she must be careful. Have a care, Mitzy. Don’t make things harder on yourself. Valentina’s words, from long ago. Loaded with scorn and menace. Better not to talk to him at all, however much she liked the words in her mouth: Charles, and love, and devotion. Other words ran alongside them, refusing to stay silent. Celeste. Élodie. Delphine. Whore. Better not to talk at all, then, but it made her sad to imagine Zach never coming again. To think of him outside, knocking, bringing pictures of her that sang like joyful songs in her head when she saw them. Windows to a time she loved, a time she lived; windows so clear and crystalline bright. But have a care, have a care. The pair of them swam out of sight beneath the cliff and she turned from the window, went up the stairs without thought, and stood outside the door to the right. The closed door. She put her hand to the wood the way she’d done so many times before.

Then came the rush of hope, of fear. She thought she heard something move, inside. Several times now, since Zach Gilchrist had started to visit. Since the hearth charm had fallen down and left the house wide-open for a while. Holding her breath, she put her ear to the door, pressing her head close to it, spreading the old flesh of her cheek. Her hand rose up, went to the doorknob, and closed around it. She could open it, and go in. She thought she knew what she would see, but she wasn’t sure, not completely sure. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to see. There were knots in the wooden door, and a face within them. She thought it was Valentina’s, but it could have been Hannah’s; wide eyes, open mouth. Saying, Dimity, what have you done? What have you done? The things Hannah knew; the things she saw that night. Hannah’s heart had been beating so hard that Dimity had heard it clearly, clattering against her ribs, and she’d been shocked to see such fear, such horror, twisting the girl’s face and making her body shake. Swallowing, Dimity uncurled her hand from the doorknob and stepped back.

At the farmhouse, Hannah disappeared into what might have been a laundry room-there were heaps of clothes and cloth, spewing from several baskets around the floor; ranks of empty soap boxes. She came out with a lurid beach towel, striped and multicolored; Zach took it and rubbed it over his hair. The rest of him had dried on the walk up the valley from the beach, but his boxers were sodden and cold, clinging and clammy against his skin. He fidgeted them surreptitiously beneath his jeans, but Hannah saw, and smiled.

“Got a problem down there?” she said.

“Bit of sand, bit of seaweed. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Coffee?”

“Is it safe to drink?”

“Yes, I think so.” Hannah eyed him haughtily. “The boiling water kills the germs.” She went through to the kitchen, stepping deftly, automatically, around the piles of debris in the hallway. The piles had clearly been there a long time. The gray-and-white collie, which had appeared at the edge of the yard and followed them in, slunk into its bed and watched them wistfully as they passed.

“Seriously, though… the yard is so tidy…” Zach looked around the kitchen and raised his hands at the chaos. “How do you ever find anything in here?”

“The yard’s important, that’s why it’s tidy. And I find that the stuff I need rises to the surface in here, eventually.” She cast her eyes around the room, as if really seeing it for once. The corners of her mouth twitched and turned down. “My mum was very house-proud. She’d be horrified, if she saw this. Especially her kitchen. It used to be the kind of kitchen where you’d come in from school and there’d be a tray of fresh scones cooling on the table.” Zach said nothing. “But… Toby was messy. I was appalled, when he first took me back to his room at college. In himself he was clean, tidy-a bit too tidy, almost. But his room looked like a bomb had gone off. It smelled of moldy bread and old socks. I had to throw the window open and lean out for air; grip of passion or no grip of passion. When he died… when he died it seemed a fitting homage, of a kind. The mess. Like I could let him have it his way, since he’d gone and left me.” She shrugged sadly. “But to be honest, once it gets past a certain point, cleaning ceases to be an option. You don’t even see the mess anymore.”

“I could help you, if you like? I mean, if you wanted to have a clear-out, one day.”

“One day?” She shook her head. “It’d take a month.”

“Well,” said Zach, then couldn’t think what to add. Hannah picked up two mugs and ostentatiously washed one under the hot tap. She gave Zach an arch look, and he tried not to notice that there was no washing-up liquid, and that the sponge she used to wash it was stained and bedraggled. But Hannah paused and looked at it, discarded it, and used her fingers to finish the job.

“Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop watching me, stop making me notice. I haven’t got time to sort it.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” Hannah put the mugs down by the kettle and spread her hands on the countertop for a moment, leaning her weight onto them, arms rigid and straight. Her bikini had imprinted a wet echo of itself through her shirt and trousers, and the rat-tail ends of her hair were hung with droplets of water like beads. The kettle began to make a quiet groaning sound, and she flicked it off again with a quick, decisive movement.

“Come on,” she said abruptly, reaching out a hand to him. “Let’s get out of these wet things.”

She took him upstairs to a large bedroom that faced the sea. The afternoon light poured in through two huge sash windows, warming the scattered corpses of flies on the sill. If there had once been curtains, there weren’t anymore. The bed had a high brass headboard; the duvet was crumpled, half on the floor. Cracks zigzagged like lightning through the pale blue paint on the walls. Hannah shut the door behind Zach and turned to face him as she pulled off her shirt and the wet red bikini top. She fixed him with a challenging expression, the pale ghost of her swimsuit diffuse against the summer tan on her skin, outlining her small breasts, making her nipples stand out darkly. Zach stepped forwards, put his hands around her waist and ran them up along her spine to the hard lines where her shoulder blades pressed through the skin. He kissed her and tasted salt. The sea was on her lips, on her chin and cheeks. Cold drops of it fell from her hair onto his arms when he wrapped them around her; and he felt her body tense up, pushing herself closer to him. Desire stormed through him, choking and irresistible, made his arms tighten until the breath was squeezed from her, and her mouth grew softer. When he opened his eyes, her look was no longer measuring but calm and urgent. It was an expression Zach could read at once; one he recognized, finally and without doubt. He didn’t loosen his grip for a second. He straightened up, lifting her so that her feet came off the floor. He turned towards the bed, and they fell together. The feel of her arms wrapped around him, the movement of her body, its taste, its smell, were all-consuming; made the world and everything in it vanish. For a while there was only the two of them, tangled together, and nothing else mattered.

When Zach woke up, he was sprawled across Hannah’s mattress like a starfish. The sheets smelled faintly of sheep. Every limb felt warm and heavy, but his mind was clear. He looked up and saw her standing in front of the window, still naked, chewing at the skin of one thumb. He took the opportunity to study her, knowing that he could do so only when she wasn’t aware of it. Her big toes turned up slightly at the ends, no paint on the nails. There was a tiny, dark tattoo of a seahorse on her right hip, just where the bone showed its shape. Her buttocks sank slightly down, creasing the skin into a single neat fold. He could count her ribs, which were scattered with freckles. Her hair was dry now, a wild, knotty-looking thatch. Wide eyes, focused far out to sea. Again he had the strangest feeling that he knew her, had seen her before. There was something naggingly familiar in everything, even the way she stood, lost in thought, and Zach wondered if this was some level of recognition deeper than the physical, than the mundane arrangement of features on a face. Something instinctive, needful. He felt something crack inside him then; a small rupture and a bruising sensation, at once new and familiar. He greeted it with mixed feelings-a dismayed sort of welcome.

“Hello,” he murmured. Hannah stopped chewing, looked over at him.

“Back in the land of the living?” she said.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Oh, only about half an hour. I wouldn’t call it sleep, though. Coma is more like it.”

“Sorry. You took me by surprise, a bit. Come here.” For a second she ignored the command, but then she crossed to the bed and sat down cross-legged, entirely unself-consciously. “Aren’t you worried about people seeing in?” he said, smiling.

“There’s nobody out there to see in. And the curtains caught fire, once.” She sniffed, turned to look at the window. “The wind blew them into a candle. So I took them down and never got around to replacing them. It helps me get up in the mornings, anyway. The light coming in.” Zach tried not to think about Hannah’s room, candlelit; about such a romantic gesture, and who it might have been for. He put out his hand and ran it along her arm, caught her wrist, and pulled her towards him. She resisted at first, frowning, but then relented and lay down next to him, curled towards him, not touching.

“Hannah, what about Ilir?” he asked tentatively.

“What about him?”

“You don’t think he’d mind? Us sleeping together?”

“No, he wouldn’t mind. It’s none of his business, really.”

“You mean you and he aren’t… you know. A couple?”

“Well, I’d hardly be shagging you in broad daylight if we were, would I?”

“I really don’t know,” said Zach, with complete honesty.

“No, Ilir is not my… lover. He never has been. As far as he’s concerned, I’m family. He’s a friend and… a colleague, in a way.” She looked at him frankly, and behind the lightness of her tone was something more serious. “There’s nobody else.”

“Thank God,” said Zach, relieved. “I would have hated to have to fight him. He looks… tough.”

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” Hannah chuckled.

“It… feels right, to me. This. Being with you, I mean. I feel like I’ve known you for a long time. Do you know what I mean?” he said.

“I don’t know.” Hannah turned her face to the ceiling, unblinking. “Let’s not rush things, Zach.”

“No, of course not. I only meant… that I was glad. Glad to have met you,” he said. She turned to face him again and grinned.

“I’m glad to have met you, too, Zach. You have a very nice arse.”

“One of many fine attributes, I assure you,” he said, linking his hands behind his head and leaning back with conspicuous satisfaction. Hannah jabbed him sharply in the ribs with one finger. “Ouch! What was that for?” he said, laughing.

“Just pricking that ego, before it gets too swollen.” She smiled. Zach grabbed her hands before she could strike again, pulled her close, and kissed her.

“I’ve bruised you,” he said, putting his fingertips to her collarbone, where a pinkish mark was blooming.

“I’ll live.”

He laced the fingers of his left hand into those of her right, and pulled her hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. He ran his thumb over her palm and along her thumb, and felt a hard ridge in the flesh.

“What’s this?” He held her hand farther away so he could focus his eyes. A thick, straight scar ran diagonally right across the pad of her thumb. Silvery white, and raised. “How did you get this? Looks like it was deep,” he said.

“It was…” Hannah paused, frowning slightly. She withdrew her hand and cradled it in front of her face. “It was the night Toby died. I shut it in the car door. Hard. Nearly split my thumb in half. But I didn’t even notice I’d done it until the next day, when somebody pointed it out to me. It was numb. Like the rest of me, I suppose.”

“Jesus. You poor thing.”

“Me?” She shook her head. “I wasn’t the one drowning.”

“Hannah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“No, no, it’s okay, Zach. I actually want to talk about him. I know that sounds weird, probably too weird for you. But it’s been ages since I have. I guess you don’t want to hear about him. About that night.” She turned a steady gaze on him, her eyes dark and diffuse, hidden from the light.

“Tell me,” he said. Hannah took a slow breath in.

A night of thumping wind and solid rain. A night when the sky spat out crystals of ice to cut into your eyes and lips, and the air was sucked out of your lungs before you could speak or breathe. A night so black that any light dazzled you rather than guided you. Weather that found every leak in your roof and seam in your clothes; every loose tile and weak spot, every chink. Toby was a volunteer lifeboat crewman, though he’d grown up in Kensal Rise. Living out a boyhood fantasy of taming the bucking waves and coming like a guardian angel to people waiting for the sea to claim them. And live it out he did, for three years once he’d completed the training. He loved it-loved helping, loved the adrenaline, loved to be so needed. So that night, his last night, he gave her a grin from the bedroom door as he went out, and Hannah got dressed and followed him. Followed her feet down to the shore where the water was boiling angrily around the rocks; because that grin of his had been too excited, too pleased, and she believed in a watching fate that took pleasure in punishing those who went too lightly into danger.

She could see nothing from where she stood. The boat in trouble, a luxury yacht on its way back from St. Ives, was five miles out from the coast and farther west, beyond Lulworth. She took the jeep, drove with reckless haste to that cove, slammed her hand in the door, and felt nothing. She could see no more from the high path above Lulworth Cove, but still she waited with the weather blaring all around her and her ears throbbing with it, feeling the spray scorch her face until she was numb all over, with fear or with cold she couldn’t tell. Eventually, so chilled she thought her heart might stop, she drove back to the farmhouse and waited in the kitchen. Waited for the news she knew was coming. The night stretched on and a knot of dread appeared inside her, hard and heavy. She picked up the phone, but the gale had brought the lines down. Her mobile had no signal. But still she started grieving before she was even told what had happened, because she already knew she’d lost him. A stray line from the yacht had whipped out in the darkness, caught him around the head with stunning force. He was over and into the rolling black waves before anybody could act. And then gone. Swallowed by the ten-meter crests and the sucking depths of the troughs; water like flint, closing over him implacably.

“The couple on the yacht were rescued, cold and scared but none the worse for it. But Toby was gone. That’s what Gareth, his closest friend on the boat, told me. He was just gone.”

“Did they ever find him?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “A week or so later, about twelve miles down the coast. What was left of him, anyway.”

“He must have been brave, to go out there and do that,” said Zach. Hannah sighed and moved a bit closer to him.

“No, he wasn’t. Bravery is facing down your fears. Toby wasn’t frightened to begin with. I’m not sure if that makes him a hero or a bloody idiot. Possibly both.” She let her head roll forwards until their foreheads touched. “It feels good, talking about him. After so long not talking about him. I can’t remember when I last said his name out loud until you came here.”

“I’m not sure what to do with that,” said Zach, entirely truthfully. Hannah smiled briefly and shrugged.

“You don’t need to do anything with it. It wasn’t meant to be a gift, or a burden. I just wanted to know what it would feel like. Saying it all out loud.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“Really?”

“Really. If it helps… if it makes you feel better.”

“Well, I’m not sure if better is the word… lighter, maybe. Thank you.” They lay in silence for a while and then Hannah kissed him, opening her mouth gently, inviting him back in. Zach gathered her up in his arms, pulled her on top of him, held their bodies close together.

Ducking through the pub’s doorway on his way back from Southern Farm, his mind busy with thoughts of Hannah and new memories of the taste and scent of her, Zach bumped into an old man who was coming out.

“Excuse me, sorry,” he said, putting out his hands to right the man, who staggered a little before catching his balance. The man made a sort of rumbling grunt in his throat, which Zach took as an acceptance of his apology, and he was about to pass him by when something stopped him-when their eyes met, a peculiar expression flooded the old man’s face. Zach paused. The man was thin and frail-looking, his face one of deep contours-in his cheeks, around his eyes and mouth and chin. A face of shadows and hiding places. His eyes swam with moisture and the end of his nose was purplish with a spread of broken thread veins. The look he gave Zach was one of recognition, and distrust that bordered on hostility. “We haven’t met,” said Zach, hurriedly, as the man tried to move away. He held out his hand. “I’m Zach Gilchrist. I’m staying here at the pub for a while, and doing some research into the life of Charles Aubrey…” The old man didn’t shake his hand, and he didn’t introduce himself. Zach’s smile faded. “I’d be very interested in talking to anybody who was living in the village at the time… in the late 1930s, that is…”

“I know who you are. What you want. I’ve seen you,” the man said at last, in a voice every bit as thick with the Dorset burr as Dimity’s. “Thought you’d have been gone again by now,” he added in a faintly accusatory tone. There was something familiar about him, and suddenly Zach remembered-the old man who’d been having lunch with his wife on his first day in Blacknowle. The one who’d got up and left when he started to ask about Aubrey.

“Have you lived here a long time, sir?” he asked. The old man blinked and nodded.

“All my life. I’m from this place, I’ve a right to be here.”

“And I haven’t?”

“What good are you doing?”

“What good? Well… the book I plan to write would really put Blacknowle on the map. I mean to show just how crucial to his life and work Aubrey’s time here was…”

“And what good will that do?” the man pressed.

“Well, it… it can’t do any harm, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“You think that because you don’t know, that’s all. You don’t know.” The old man sniffed, and took a faded green handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose.

“Well, I’m starting to know… I mean, I’m trying to learn. Please believe me when I say that I’m here with the best of intentions. As a scholar of the artist. I’ve no wish to offend anybody.” He paused, and thought for a second. “Your name’s not Dennis, by any chance, is it?” The old man hesitated, as if considering whether to answer, then shook his head.

“Never known a Dennis. Not round here,” he said, and in spite of himself there was a spark of curiosity in his voice. “What’s this Dennis got to do with anything?”

“Well, I’d be happy to sit down and discuss my research with you, if you’d be willing to talk to me about your time here in the thirties…” Zach smiled. The old man hesitated, sucking in his lower lip. “I’ve had several very useful talks with Dimity Hatcher already,” said Zach, hoping to persuade the old man, but her name had the opposite effect. His face settled into fixed lines, hardened with resolve.

“I’ve nothing to say to you about Dimity Hatcher!” he snapped, and he suddenly sounded hurt, almost frightened. Zach blinked.

“Well, all right. It’s Aubrey I’m really interested in, after all…” But as he said this, he realized that it was no longer true. His curiosity about Dimity’s life had grown since he first met her, and continued to grow each time they spoke, each time there were things she would not talk about, or was confused about. Or was lying about. “Might I at least know your name?” he said. Again, the old man paused and considered before answering.

“Wilfred Coulson,” he said.

“Well, Mr. Coulson, you know where I am, if you change your mind. I really would be so grateful for any help you could give me, even if the memories might not seem relevant to you. Anecdotes, anything. Dimity’s already told me about her love affair with Charles Aubrey…” Zach said, out on a limb, hoping for a reaction and getting one.

“Love affair? No.” Wilfred Coulson’s eyes blazed into life. “That was not love.”

“Oh? But… Dimity very much seems to think otherwise…”

“What she thinks and what is what don’t always match up,” the old man muttered.

“What do you think was between them, if you don’t think it was love?” Zach asked, but Wilfred Coulson only frowned, looking past Zach into the dark interior of the pub, and a sudden wave of sadness engulfed his face. “That was not love,” he repeated; then he turned and walked unsteadily away from the building, leaving Zach to puzzle over this adamant declaration.

It was early in the evening but Zach’s stomach was growling, so he ordered his dinner and sat down in what was becoming his regular spot, on an upholstered bench beneath a west-facing window, looking into the heart of the village. He was waiting for his computer to boot up when a bark of male laughter filled the room and a group of four men sauntered in. Zach didn’t pay them any attention until Pete Murray put both sets of his knuckles on the bar and braced his arms resolutely.

“Gareth, you know I’m not going to serve you, so why bother coming in?” he said.

“What? You’re telling me I’m still barred? That was bloody months ago!” said a skinny man with a gaunt, ageless face and glittering eyes. He could have been twenty, or forty; his expression was one of deep distrust and disaffection. Behind him was a huge bulk of a man, tall and bearded, and wearing a faded lilac sweatshirt that looked oddly endearing on his huge frame. Sitting as close as he was, Zach could see the haze of grime on the garment. The quartet all carried the faint smell of unwashed clothes and fish.

“Barred is barred, until I say you’re not barred.”

“Well, are you going to say it or what?” The thin man leaned menacingly towards the bar. Beside him, the huge lilac man loomed, his brows pulled so low they almost covered his eyes.

“You’re barred,” said Pete Murray, and Zach admired the steady tone of his voice. “Go somewhere else.”

Conversations around the bar fell silent as the four men stayed where they were for a hung moment. Then the thin man thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away, knots writhing at the sharp corners of his jaw.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he snapped at a pair of middle-aged women as he passed their table, and they exchanged a startled expression above their white-wine spritzers.

“Sorry about that, ladies. How about another, on the house?” said the publican, once the four men had left.

“Who were those guys?” Zach asked as Pete brought over his food a short while later. The landlord sighed.

“They’re pretty harmless, really. Well, I think they are. Fatty and skinny are James and Gareth Horne. They’re brothers, fishermen, both of them. I don’t know the other two-just mates of theirs, I suppose. But the Horne brothers-well, every village has its tearaways, doesn’t it? When they were kids it was graffiti, sniffing glue, getting drunk and smashing up the telephone box. Once they started going out to work on the boats they calmed down a bit, but then there were rumors of more serious drugs, and back in the spring I caught Gareth dealing to some youngsters out the back here. They cleared off and got rid of it before the police caught up with them, but they’re barred for life as far as I’m concerned.”

“They sound lovely.”

“Give them a wide berth, that’d be my advice,” said Pete.

When Zach finally managed to log in to his e-mail, he found a message from Paul Gibbons at the auction house in London, which he opened eagerly. After a brief preamble, Paul wrote that the buyer of one of the previous Dennis pictures, a Mrs. Annie Langton, happened to be an old family friend and would be happy to meet him and let him look at the picture; he gave her contact details. Zach checked his watch. It was still only seven in the evening, not too late to call somebody. As usual, his mobile phone had no signal, so he fed coins into the pub’s pay phone, and rang Annie Langton straightaway. She sounded elderly but bright, and very well-to-do, and he arranged to visit her on the following Thursday. She lived in Surrey, and Zach used the postcode she’d given him to pull up some online directions. It would take him a good two and a half hours to drive it, and he silently wished that it would be worth it. There was something to be found, he knew. He could feel it in his gut; an ill-defined but unmistakable sense of something amiss, like entering a familiar room and finding the furniture moved. He prayed that whatever it was, he would find it in Annie Langton’s picture of Dennis.