A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER ONE

The wind was so strong that Dimity felt herself pulled between two worlds; caught in a waking dream so vivid that the edges blurred, and then vanished. The gale tore around the corners of the cottage, humming down the chimney, crashing in the trees outside. But louder than any of that was the sea, beating against the stony shore, breaking over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. A bass roar that Dimity seemed to feel in her chest, thumping up through her bones from the ground beneath her feet.

She’d been dozing in her chair by the remnants of the fire. Too old and tired to rise, to take herself upstairs to bed. But now the wind had wrenched the kitchen window open and was flinging it wide against its hinges, hard enough that the next bang might be its last. The frame was rotten; it had been years since the window was held shut by anything more than a wedge of folded paper. The sound came into her dream, and woke her, and she hovered on the verge of sleep as the cold night air poured in, pooling at her feet like the rising tide. She had to get up and wedge the window shut before the pane smashed. Dimity opened her eyes, and could see the gray outlines of the room well enough. Outside the window the moon raced across the sky, clouds streaking past it.

Shivering, she made her way to the kitchen window, where the storm was caking the glass with salt. The bones of her feet ached as they pushed through her skin. Sleeping in the chair made her hips and back stiffen up like swollen wood, and it was an effort to push the joints into movement. The wind coming in lifted her hair and made her shiver, but she shut her eyes to sniff at it, because the smell of the sea was so dear, so familiar. It was the smell of everything she knew; the smell of her home, and her prison; the smell of her own self. When she opened her eyes, she gasped.

Celeste was there. Out there on the cliffs, standing with her back to the cottage, facing out to sea, cast in silver by the moonlight. The surface of the Channel heaved and churned, spindrift whipped from white crests and flung stinging against the shore. Dimity felt tiny flecks of it land on her face, hard and corrosive. How could Celeste be there? After so many long years, after she vanished so completely? But it was her, for certain. That long, familiar back, a supple spine descending into the voluptuous curves of her hips; arms straight by her sides with her fingers spread. I like the touch of the wind, running through my hands. Her words seemed to whisper through the window, with that strange guttural accent of hers. Long hair and long, shapeless dress, rippling out behind her; the fabric pressed against the contours of her thighs and waist and shoulders. Then came a sudden clear image-of him, sketching Celeste, his eyes flicking up with that frightening intensity, that unbreakable concentration. She shut her eyes again, and held them tight. The memory was both beloved and unbearable.

When she opened her eyes, she was still in her chair and the window was still banging, the wind still blowing in. Had she not gotten up at all, then? Had she not gone to the window and seen Celeste? Dimity couldn’t tell whether that was real and this, now, a dream, or if it was the other way around. Her heart pounded at the thought-that Celeste had come back; that Celeste had discovered what had happened, and who was to blame. The woman’s fierce, angry glare flashed before her mind’s eye, seeing everything, seeing right through her; and suddenly she knew. A premonition, Dimity heard her mother’s voice say, breathing sourly into her ear; so clearly that she looked around to see if Valentina was really there. Shadows lay in the corners of the room and stared back at her. Her mother had sometimes claimed to have the gift, and had always searched for signs of it in her daughter. Fostered any inkling of inner sight. Perhaps, finally, this was what Valentina had hoped for, because just then Dimity knew that change was coming. As sure as the sea was deep. After all the many long years, change was coming. Somebody was coming. Fear wrapped its heavy arms around her.

Early morning sunshine poured in through the gallery’s tall front windows, bouncing up from the floor, dazzling. Late summer sun that was still warm, and promised a fine day, but when Zach opened the front door, there was a stony coolness to the air that hadn’t been there even a week ago. A damp tang that spoke of autumn. Zach took a deep breath and turned his face to the sun for a moment. Autumn. The turning of the season, the end of the happy hiatus he’d been enjoying, of pretending that everything would stay the same. Today was the last day, and Elise was leaving.

He cast a look along the street in either direction. It was only just eight o’clock, and not a single person was walking along his particular street in Bath. The Gilchrist Gallery sat on a narrow side street, just a hundred yards or so from Great Pulteney Street, a main thoroughfare. Close enough to be easy to find, he’d thought. Close enough that people would see his sign when they were walking past and happened to glance up the street. And the sign was clearly visible-he’d checked to make sure. It was just that surprisingly few people happened to glance to either side as they walked along Great Pulteney Street. It was too early for shoppers yet anyway, he reassured himself. The steady streams of people crisscrossing the bottom of the road had the smart, hurried look of people going to work. The muffled sound of their footsteps carried through the still air, tunneling towards him through stark black shadows and blinding patches of sunlight. The sound seemed to make the silence at Zach’s door ring out sadly. A gallery shouldn’t rely on footfall, or passing trade, he reminded himself. A gallery was something the right people should seek out. He sighed, and went inside.

Zach’s gallery had been a jeweler’s shop before he’d taken over the lease four years previously. When it was refitted, tiny metal links and clasps turned up underneath the counter and behind the skirting; scraps of gold and silver wire. He even found a jewel one day, tucked behind a shelf where there was a narrow crack between wood and wall. It fell onto his foot with a solid little tap when he took the shelf down. A small, sparkling, perfectly clear stone, which might be a diamond. Zach kept it, and took it as a good sign. Perhaps it had cursed him instead, he mused. Perhaps he should have sought out the erstwhile jeweler and given it back to him. The shop’s aspect was perfect, sitting on a slight slope with its huge windows turned southeastwards, capturing all this morning sunshine but directing it to the floor of the shop, not onto the walls, where the perishable artworks hung. Even on dark days, it seemed bright inside, and just big enough to step back to admire the larger pieces from a suitable distance.

Not that there were many large pieces up, at that moment. He’d finally sold the Waterman landscape the week before, a piece by one of his contemporary local artists. It had hung in the window long enough for Nick Waterman to start fretting about the colors fading, and the sale had come just in time to stop the artist moving his whole collection elsewhere. His whole collection. Zach snorted softly. Three cityscapes of the Bath skyline from various vantage points on the surrounding hills, and a slightly mawkish beach scene of a girl walking a red setter. Only the color of the dog had made him take the piece. A fabulous coppery red, a blaze of life in an otherwise stagnant scene. The price of the painting, split evenly between gallery and artist, had given Zach enough money to pay his road tax and get back the use of his car. Just in time to take Elise farther afield, on some proper day trips. They’d been to the caves at Cheddar; to Longleat; for a picnic in Savernake Forest. He turned slowly on his heels and looked at the rest of the stock, eyes sliding over some small but nice pieces by various twentieth-century artists and a few recent watercolors by local artists, and then alighting on the stuttering heart of the collection: three drawings by Charles Aubrey.

He’d hung them together carefully, on the best-lit wall, at the perfect height. The first was a rough pencil sketch, called Mitzy Picking. The subject was squatting inelegantly, with her back to the artist and her knees wide apart, the fabric of a plain skirt draped over them. Her blouse was tucked carelessly into her waistband, and had come out at the back, riding up so that a fragment of skin was showing. It was a drawing of outlines and hasty shading, and yet this small section of her back, the indentation of her spine, was so beautifully rendered that Zach always wanted to put out his hand, brush his thumb along the groove and feel the smooth skin, the hard muscles underneath it. The slight dampness of sweat where the sun warmed her. The girl was apparently sorting some kind of foliage into a wicker basket on the ground between her knees, and as if she felt the viewer’s scrutiny, as if she was half anticipating this uninvited touch on her back, she had inclined her face towards her shoulder so that her ear and the outline of her cheek were visible. Nothing could be seen of her eye except the smallest hint of the lashes beyond the curve of a cheekbone, and yet Zach could feel her awareness, feel how alert she was to whoever was behind her. The viewer, all these years later, or the artist, at the time? The drawing was signed and dated 1938.

The next piece was in black and white chalks on buff-colored paper. It was a portrait of Celeste, Charles Aubrey’s mistress. Celeste-there seemed to be no record of the woman’s surname anywhere-was of French Moroccan descent, and had a honeyed complexion under masses of black hair. The drawing was just of her head and neck, halting at her collarbones, and in that small space it had encapsulated the woman’s anger so intensely that Zach often saw people recoil slightly when they first saw it, as if they expected to be reprimanded for daring to look. Zach often wondered what had put her in such a violent mood, but the fire in her eyes told him that the artist had been on thin ice when he’d chosen that precise moment to draw her. Celeste was beautiful. All of Aubrey’s women had been beautiful, and even when they weren’t conventionally so, he still captured the essence of their allure in his portraits. But there was no ambiguity about Celeste, with her perfectly oval face, huge almond-shaped eyes, and swaths of inky hair. Her face, her expression, were bold, fearless, utterly captivating. Small wonder that she managed to captivate Charles Aubrey for as long as she did. Longer than any other mistress he had.

The third Aubrey picture was always the one he looked at last, so that he could look at it the longest. Delphine, 1938. The artist’s daughter, aged thirteen at the time. He had drawn her from the knees upwards, in pencil again, and she stood with her hands clasped in front of her, wearing a blouse with a sailor collar, her curly hair caught back in a ponytail. She was standing three-quarters turned towards the artist, with her shoulders stiff and set, as if she had just been told to stand up straight. It was like a school photograph, posed for uncomfortably; but the trace of a nervous smile played around the girl’s mouth as if she was startled by the attention, and unexpectedly pleased by it. There was sunlight in her eyes and on her hair, and with a few tiny highlights Aubrey had managed to convey the girl’s uncertainty so clearly that she looked ready to break her pose in the next instant, cover her smile with her hand, and turn her face away shyly. She was diffident, unsure of herself, obedient; Zach loved her with a bewildering force that was partly paternal, protective, and partly something more. Her face was still that of a child, but her expression, her eyes, held traces of the woman she would grow into. She was the very embodiment of adolescence, of a promise newly made, spring waiting to blossom. Zach had spent hours staring at her portrait, wishing he could have known her.

It was a valuable drawing, and if he would only be willing to sell it the wolves might have been held from the door for a while. He even knew to whom he could sell it, the very next day if he decided to. Philip Hart, a fellow Aubrey enthusiast. Zach had outbid him for the drawing at a London auction three years ago, and Philip had been to visit it two or three times a year since then, to see if Zach was ready to sell. But Zach never was. He thought he never would be. Hart had offered him seventeen thousand pounds on his last visit, and for the first time ever, Zach had wavered. Lovely as they were, he’d have taken half that amount for the drawings of Celeste or Mitzy, the other remnants of his ever-shrinking Aubrey stock. But he couldn’t bring himself to part with Delphine. In other sketches of her-and there weren’t many-she was a bony child, a background figure, overshadowed by the sparkling presence of her sister, Élodie, or by bold Celeste. But in this one sketch she was her own self; alive, and on the cusp of everything that was to come. Whatever that may have been. This was the last surviving picture of her that Aubrey had drawn before his catastrophic decision to go and fight on the Continent during the Second World War.

Zach stood and stared at her now, her beautifully rendered hands with the short, blunt nails; the creases in the ribbon holding back her hair. In the bright light of the gallery, Zach’s reflection stared back from the glass, just as visible as the pencil lines behind it. If he concentrated, he could see both at once-his expression overlaying hers, her eyes looking out of his face. He didn’t like what he saw-suddenly his own absorbed, wistful expression made him look older than his thirty-five years; and just as suddenly, he felt it as well. He hadn’t combed his hair yet and it stood up in tufts, and he badly needed a shave. The shadows under his eyes he could do less about. He’d been sleeping badly for weeks, since he’d found out about Elise.

There was a thumping of footsteps and Elise came bustling down the stairs into the gallery from the flat above, swinging through the door on its handle, her face alight, long strands of brown hair flying out behind her.

“Hey! I’ve told you not to swing on the door like that! You’re too big, Els. You’ll pull it off its hinges,” said Zach, catching her up and lifting her away from the door.

“Yes, Dad,” said Elise, any hint of contrition ruined by a wide grin and the shadow of laughter, creeping up on the words. “Can we have breakfast now? I’m just so hungry.”

“Just so hungry? Well, that is serious. Okay. Give me one second.”

“One!” Elise shouted, and then clattered down the remaining steps to the main shop floor, where there was enough space to twirl, arms wide, feet threatening to tangle with each other. Zach watched her for a second and felt his throat tighten. She had been with him for four weeks now, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to cope without her. Elise was six years old, sturdy, healthy, vibrant. She had Zach’s exact shade of brown eyes, but hers were bigger and brighter, the whites whiter, the shape of them in a constant state of flux from wide with amazement or outrage to narrow with laughter or sleep. On Elise, the brown eyes were beautiful. She was wearing purple jeans, torn through at the knees, with a lightweight green blouse open over a pink T-shirt on which a photograph of Gemini, her favorite pony from her riding school, was emblazoned. It was a photo Elise had taken herself, and it wasn’t very good. Gemini had raised his nose towards the camera and laid back his ears, and the flash had caused a lurid flare in one of his eyes, so that, to Zach, he looked bad tempered, oddly elongated, and possibly evil to boot. But Elise loved the T-shirt as much as she loved the pony. The outfit was finished with a bright yellow plastic handbag; mismatched clothes that made Elise look gaudy and delicious, like a multicolored hard candy. Ali would not approve of the outfit, which Elise had assembled herself, but Zach was damned if he was going to have an argument and make her get changed on their last morning together.

“Snazzy outfit, Els,” he called down to her.

“Thanks!” she replied, breathlessly, still spinning.

Zach realized he was staring at her. Trying to notice everything about her. Knowing that the next time he saw her, myriad subtle changes would have taken place. She might even have outgrown the T-shirt with the ugly gray pony on it, or just lost interest in the creature, although that seemed unlikely. At the moment she seemed as upset about leaving the pony as she was about leaving her friends, her school. Her father. Time would tell, he supposed. He was about to find out if his daughter was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of person or one for whom absence made the heart grow fonder. He hoped to God she was the latter. Zach downed the last of his coffee, shut the front door, and flipped the lock closed, then grabbed his daughter around her ribs to make her squeal with laughter.

Breakfast was eaten at a tatty pine table in the kitchen of the flat above the gallery, to the strains of Miley Cyrus on the CD player. Zach sighed slightly as his least favorite song by the saccharine pop star came around again, and realized to his horror that he had, gradually and against his will, learned all the words. Elise bobbed her shoulders up and down as she ate her cereal, in a kind of seated dance, and Zach sang a line of the chorus in a high falsetto, which made her choke and spray milk onto her chin.

“Are you excited about the trip?” he asked carefully, once Miley had faded into blessed silence. Elise nodded but said nothing, chasing the last few flakes of cereal around in her bowl, dipping them out of the milk like fishing for tadpoles. “This time tomorrow you’ll be on an aeroplane, high up in the sky. It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?” he pressed, hating himself, because he could see that Elise wasn’t sure how she should answer. He knew she was excited, scared, looking forward to it, sad to be leaving. A mixture of emotions she was too young to have to deal with, let alone express.

“I think you should come too, Dad,” she said at last, pushing her bowl away and leaning back, swinging her legs awkwardly.

“Well, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. But I’ll see you over the holidays, and I’ll come and visit lots,” he said automatically, and then cursed himself in case he couldn’t. Transatlantic flights didn’t come cheap.

“Promise?” Elise looked up at him and held his gaze, as if hearing the hollowness of the words. Zach’s stomach twisted, and when he spoke he found it hard to make his voice sound normal.

“I promise.”

They had to go before the end of the summer holidays, Ali had argued, so that Elise would have a chance to settle in for a couple of weeks before starting her new school. Her new school in Hingham, near Boston. Zach had never been to New England, but he pictured colonial architecture, wide-open beaches, and rows of pristine white yachts moored along bleached wooden jetties. It was these beaches and boats that Elise was most excited about. Lowell had a sailing boat. Lowell was going to teach Ali and Elise to sail. They were going to sail up the coast, and have picnics. Let him see one picture of Elise near a boat without a life jacket on, thought Zach, and he would be over there in a flash to knock Lowell’s smug head off his shoulders. He sighed inwardly at the petty thought. Lowell was a nice guy. Lowell would never let a child near a boat without a life jacket, least of all somebody else’s child. Lowell wasn’t trying to be Elise’s father-he appreciated that she already had a father. Lowell was so damn friendly and reasonable, when Zach wanted so badly to be able to hate him.

He packed Elise’s things into her Happy Feet rolling cabin case, making a sweep of the flat and the gallery for glittery hairclips, Ahlberg books, and the numerous small plastic objects that seemed to pay out behind his daughter wherever she went. A bread-crumb trail, for if ever he lost her. He took Miley Cyrus out of the stereo, then picked up her other CDs-readings of fairy tales and rhyming songs, more cheesy pop music and an obscure set of German folktales sent by one of Ali’s aunts. He picked up Elise’s favorite, the Tales of Beatrix Potter, and considered keeping it. They had listened to it in the car on all their day trips during the past week, and the sound of Elise speaking along with the narrator, trying to mimic the voices, and then parroting lines for the rest of the day, had become the soundtrack to the last days of summer. Give me some fish, Hunca Munca! Quack, said Jemima Puddle-duck! He thought for a moment that he might play it to himself, and imagine her rendition once she was gone, but the idea of a grown man listening to children’s stories, all alone, was too tragic for words. He packed the CD away with the rest.

At eleven o’clock sharp, Ali arrived and leaned on the bell for just a couple of seconds too long, so that it sounded impatient, insistent. Through the glass in the door Zach saw her blond hair. It was cut into a short bob these days; the sun glancing off it so that it glowed. She had sunglasses hiding her eyes and wore a striped blue-and-white cotton sweater that skimmed her willowy frame. When he opened the door, he managed to smile a little, and noticed that the familiar spike of emotion she usually brought with her was blunter than before, shrinking all the time. What had been helpless love and pain and anger and desperation was now more like nostalgia; a faint ache like old grief. A feeling more softly empty, and quieter than before. Did that mean he was no longer in love with her? He supposed so. But how could that be-how could that love go and not leave a gaping hole inside him, like a tumor carved out? Ali smiled tightly, and Zach leaned down to kiss her cheek. She proffered it to him, but did not kiss him back.

“Zach. How’s everything?” she asked, still with that tight-lipped smile. She’d taken a deep breath before speaking, and kept most of it in, pent up, swelling her chest. She thought there was going to be another row, Zach realized. She was braced for it.

“Everything is great, thanks. How are you? All packed? Come in.” He stepped back and held the door for her. Once inside, Ali took off her glasses and surveyed the virtually empty walls of the gallery. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, a sign of fatigue. She turned to Zach, examined him swiftly with a look of pity and exasperation, but bit back whatever she had been about to say.

“You look… well,” she said. She was being polite, Zach realized. They had regressed from being able to say anything to each other to being polite. There was a short pause, slightly awkward as this final transition in their relationship settled. Six years of marriage, two years of divorce, back to being strangers. “Still hanging on to Delphine, I see,” Ali said.

“You know I’d never sell that picture.”

“But isn’t that what a gallery does? Buys and sells…”

“And exhibits. She’s my permanent exhibit.” Zach smiled slightly.

“She’d buy a lot of flights to visit Elise.”

“She shouldn’t have to,” Zach snapped, his voice hard. Ali looked away, folding her arms.

“Zach, don’t…” she said.

“No, let’s not. No last-minute change of heart, then.”

“Where is Elise?” Ali asked, ignoring the remark.

“Upstairs, watching something loud and tacky on TV,” he said. Ali shot him an impatient look.

“Well, I hope you’ve been doing more with her all these weeks than just plonking her down in front of-”

“Oh, give it a rest, Ali. I really don’t need parenting lessons from you.” He said it calmly, half amusedly. Ali took another deep breath and held it. “I’m sure Elise will tell you what we’ve been up to. Els! Mummy’s here!” He put his head through the door to the stairs and shouted this up to her. He had been dreading her departure for so many weeks, since Ali had told him about the move and all the fighting and discussing and fighting again had changed nothing at all. Now the dread of it had grown almost unbearable, and since the time had come, he wanted it over with. Do it quickly, make it hurt less.

Ali put her hand on his arm. “Hang on, before you call her. Don’t you want to talk about…” She trailed off, shrugged, and splayed her fingers, searching for words.

“Exactly,” said Zach. “We’ve talked and talked, and you’ve told me what you want, and I’ve told you what I want, and the upshot is you’re going to do what you want, and I can go hang. So just do it, Ali,” he said, suddenly bone-weary. His eyes were aching, and he rubbed them with his thumbs.

“This is a chance for a completely new start for Elise and me-a new life. We’ll be happier. She can forget all about…”

“All about me?”

“All about all the… upheaval. The stress of the divorce.”

“I’m never going to think it’s a good idea that you take her away from me, so there’s no point you trying to convince me. I’m always going to think it’s unfair. I never contested custody because… because I didn’t want to make things worse. Make them harder, for her and for us. And this is how you thank me for that. You move her three thousand miles away, and turn me into some guy who sees her two or three times a year and sends her presents she doesn’t like because he’s so far out of touch with what she does like…”

“It wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about you…” Ali’s eyes flashed angrily, and Zach saw the guilt there, too; saw that she’d struggled with the decision. Oddly, it made him feel no better that she had.

“How would you feel, Ali? How would you feel in my place?” he asked intently. For a horrifying second, he thought he might cry. But he didn’t. He held Ali’s gaze and made her see; and some emotion caused her cheeks to flush, her eyes to grow bright and desperate. What that emotion was, Zach could no longer read, and just at that moment Elise came rushing downstairs and flew into her mother’s arms.

As they left, Zach hugged Elise and tried to keep smiling, tried to reassure her that she didn’t need to feel guilty. But when Elise started to cry, he couldn’t keep it up-his smile became a grimace and tears blurred his last view of her, so in the end he stopped trying to pretend it was all right. Elise gulped and sobbed and scrubbed at her eyes with her knuckles, and Zach held her at arm’s length and wiped her face for her.

“I love you very much, Els. And I’ll see you very soon,” he said, giving the statements no ambiguity, no hint of a maybe. She nodded, taking huge, hitching breaths. “Come on. One last smile for your dad before you go.” She gave it a good try, her small, round mouth curling up at the corners even as sobs shook her chest. Zach kissed her and stood up.

“Go on,” he said to Ali brutally. “Go on now.” Ali reached down for Elise’s hand and towed her away along the pavement to where her car was parked. Elise turned and waved from the backseat. Waved until the car was out of sight down the hill and around the corner. And when it was, Zach felt something switch off inside him. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he knew it was vital. Numb, he sank down onto the front step of the gallery, and sat there for a long time.

For the next few days Zach went through the motions of his everyday life, opening the gallery, trying to fill his time with odd jobs, reading auction catalogs, closing the gallery again; all with this same numbness dogging his every step. There was an emptiness to everything he did. Without Elise there to wake him up, to need breakfast, to need entertaining and impressing and scolding, there seemed little point to any of the other things he did. For a while now he had thought that losing Ali was the worst thing that would happen to him. Now he knew that losing Elise was going to be much, much worse.

“You haven’t lost her. You’ll always be her dad,” said his friend Ian, over a curry the following week.

“An absentee father. Not the kind of father I wanted to be,” Zach replied morosely. Ian said nothing for a moment. He was obviously finding it hard to think of comforting things to say; he was finding Zach’s company hard. Zach felt bad about that, but he couldn’t help it. He had no bravado left; he felt neither brave, nor tough, nor resilient. When Ian tentatively suggested that the move to the States might prove liberating for Zach, might give him a fresh start, too, Zach looked up at him bleakly, and his friend fell into awkward silence. “Sorry, Ian. Crap company, aren’t I?” he apologized eventually.

“Terrible,” Ian agreed. “Thank God they do a good karai here, or I’d have left after the first ten minutes.”

“Sorry. I just… I miss her already.”

“I know. How’s business?”

“Going under.”

“Not seriously?”

“Quite possibly.” Zach smiled at the horrified expression on Ian’s face. Ian’s own company-organizing one-off adventures of a lifetime for people-was expanding all the time.

“You can’t let that happen, mate. There must be something you can do?”

“Like what? I can’t force people to buy art. They either want to buy it or they don’t.” In truth, there was more he should be doing. He should be dealing in smaller, more affordable pictures and increasing his stock that way. He should be getting up to London more; calling other dealers and past customers to remind them of his existence. Booking a stand at the London Art Fair. Anything to get the gallery some clients. It was what he’d done in the year before officially opening, and the year after that. Now the very thought tired him. It seemed to require more energy than he had left.

“What about those Charles Aubrey pictures? You must be able to sell them? Buy in some new stock instead, get things moving and shaking…” Ian suggested.

“I could… I could put two of them up for auction,” Zach conceded. But not Delphine, he thought. “But once they’re gone… that’s it. That’s the heart of the gallery gone. Who knows when-or if-I’d be able to afford to buy any more of his work? I’m meant to specialize in Aubrey. I’m an Aubrey expert, remember?”

“Yes, but… needs must, Zach. It’s business. Try not to make it so personal.”

Ian was right, but it was personal to Zach; probably far too personal. He’d known of Charles Aubrey for a very long time, since he was a small boy. On every strained, too-quiet visit to his grandparents, he would spend time standing next to his grandma, staring at the picture that hung in her dressing room. It would have hung in pride of place in the living room, his grandma told him, but Grandpa did not approve. When he asked why not, Zach was told, I was one of Aubrey’s women. The old woman always had a sparkle in her eye and a pleased smile pulling at her creased lips when she said these words. One time, Zach’s father heard her say it and put his head around the door to scowl at her. Don’t go filling the boy’s head with that nonsense, he muttered. When they went back downstairs, Zach’s father was staring at Grandpa, but the older man seemed unwilling to meet his gaze. One more of those tense, hung moments that Zach hadn’t understood at the time, that had made him half dread visiting his grandparents and half dread the black mood his father would be in for days afterwards.

The Aubrey print in his grandma’s dressing room was a scene of rocky cliffs and a churning silver sea, the cliff tops vibrant with long grass smoothed flat beneath the wind. A woman was walking along the cliff path with one hand clamped onto her hat and the other held slightly away from her, as if for balance. It was slightly impressionistic, the brushwork quick and impulsive, and yet the whole scene was alive. Looking at it, Zach expected to hear gulls and feel the touch of salt spray on his face. You could smell the wet rocks, hear the wind buffeting in your ears. That’s me, his grandma told him proudly, on more than one occasion. When she looked at the picture, it was clear she was looking into the past. Her eyes fell out of focus, drifted away to distant times and places. And yet Zach had always thought there was something slightly uneasy about the picture. It was the way the figure looked so vulnerable, on the cliff top. Walking all alone, and holding one hand out to steady herself, as if the wind wasn’t blowing in off the sea but off the land instead, and threatening to pull her over the edge into the choppy water below. If he looked at it for long enough, the picture sometimes gave Zach that spongy feeling in his knees that he got at the top of a ladder.

By the time his grandpa died, and his grandma, frail and frightened, agreed to move into an assisted living facility, the print had faded so badly that it went into the Dumpster, along with many more of their possessions that were too old, worn, and battered to be of use to anybody. It’s too big to hang in that new flat of yours, anyway, Zach’s father had said gruffly. His grandma had stared from the living room window, stared out at the Dumpster until the last possible moment before leaving. The original painting was in the Tate, and Zach went to see it whenever he was up in London. He felt nostalgic each time he looked at it. It took him back to his childhood, in the same way the smells of burned toast and Polo mints and cigarillo smoke did; and at the same time he could now see it through adult eyes, through an artist’s eyes. But perhaps it was time he stopped thinking of himself as an artist. It had been years since he’d finished a piece, even longer since he’d finished anything worth showing to anybody else. He really wanted the figure in the Aubrey painting to be his grandmother, and he often searched the figure for familiar characteristics. Tiny shoulders, comparatively large breasts. A diminutive figure with a smudge of light, tawny hair. It could have been her. The painting was dated 1939. That year, his grandma whispered to him as they stood in front of the print, she and his grandpa took a holiday in Dorset, near where Aubrey had his summer house; and they had met the artist while out walking.

Only later in life did the implications of all this begin to dawn on Zach. He never dared to ask his grandma outright about that summer, but he was willing to bet she would have given a little laugh and an evasive shrug if he had, and that there would have been that sparkle in her eye as she looked away, and a small smile lingering on her mouth. Her expression when she looked at the picture, Zach could see in hindsight, was that of an infatuated girl, still in the grip of young love over seventy years later. It got him thinking, but Zach’s father, maddeningly, bore no physical resemblance whatsoever to either Charles Aubrey or to Zach’s grandpa. But nobody in Zach’s family had ever picked up a paintbrush or a sketchbook until Zach did. None of his official forebears had any kind of artistic bent whatsoever. When he was ten, he presented his grandpa with his best-ever drawing of his BMX bike. It was good; he knew it was good. He thought his grandpa would be pleased, impressed; but the old man had frowned at the picture instead of smiling, and had handed it back to Zach with a dismissive remark. Not bad, son.

Another day in the gallery passed with barely any customers. An elderly lady spent twenty minutes turning the wire rack of postcards around and around before deciding not to buy any. How he hated that revolving wire rack. Postcards of art-last chance saloon for any serious gallery-and he couldn’t even sell them, thought Zach. He noticed that there was dust on the white wires of the rack. Tiny little banks of it on each and every horizontal. He wiped at a few with his cuff, but soon gave up and thought instead about Ian’s last question to him over their recent meal: So, what are you going to do?

Something like panic gripped him then, and gave his gut a nasty little jolt; because he really had no idea. The future stretched out shapelessly in front of him, and in it he couldn’t find one thing to aim for, one thing that would clearly be a good idea, or that he could afford to do. And looking back was no help either. His one best thing, his greatest achievement, was now thousands of miles away in Massachusetts, probably developing an American accent and forgetting him already. And when he looked behind him, everything he thought he had been building turned out to have been transient, and had crumbled into nothing when he wasn’t watching. His career as an artist, his marriage, his gallery. He genuinely wasn’t sure how it had happened-if there had been signs he’d missed, or some fundamental flaw in his approach to life. He thought he’d done all the right things; he thought he’d worked hard. But now he was divorced, just like his parents. Just like his grandparents had longed to be, held together only by the conventions of their generation. Having witnessed the bloody battleground of his parents’ separation, Zach had vowed that it would never happen to him. He had been sure, before he wed, that he would do right whatever it was that they had not. Staring into space, he followed the thread of his life back, right back, searching for all the times and places he’d gone wrong.

The sun sank below the rooftops outside, and shadows stretched long and deep across the gallery floor. Earlier every day, these shadows descended. Pooling in the narrow streets where pale Bath stone façades stretched up on either side like canyon walls. In the heat of summer they were a blissful escape from the glaring sun, from the heat and the sticky press of crowding people. Now they seemed oppressive, foreboding. Zach went back to his desk and sank into the chair, suddenly cold, and tired. He would give every last scant thing he possessed in an instant, he decided, to the first person who could tell him clearly and precisely what he should do next. He didn’t think he could stand even one more day trapped in the silence of the gallery, smothered by the sound of an absent daughter, a long-gone wife, and no clients, no customers. He had just decided to get horribly, pointlessly drunk when two things happened within the space of five minutes. First he found a new drawing by Charles Aubrey for sale by auction in the Christie’s catalog, and then he got a phone call.

He was staring at the description of the drawing as he picked up the phone, distractedly, not really interested in the call.

“Gilchrist Gallery?” he said.

“Zach? It’s David.” Clipped words in a smooth, unfathomable voice.

“Oh, hello, David,” Zach replied, dragging his eyes from the catalog and trying to place the name, the voice. He had a sudden nagging feeling that he should pay attention. There was a nonplussed grunt at the end of the line.

“David Fellows, at Haverley?”

“Yes, of course. How are you, David?” Zach said, too quickly. Guilt made his fingertips tingle, just like they had at school when the question about his missing homework was asked.

“I’m very well, thank you. Look, it’s been a while since I’ve heard from you. In truth, it’s been over eighteen months. I know you said you needed more time to get the manuscript to me, and we did agree to that, but there does come a point when a publisher starts to wonder if a book is ever going to appear…”

“Yes, look, I am sorry for the delay… I’ve been… well…”

“Zach, you’re a scholar. Books take as long as they take, I am well aware. The reason I’m calling today is to let you know that somebody else has come to us with an outline for a work on Charles Aubrey…”

“Who?”

“Perhaps it might be more politic if I didn’t say. But it’s a strong proposal; he’s shown us half the manuscript and hopes to finish in four to five months. It would coincide very nicely with next year’s exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery… Anyway, I’ve been told by the powers that be to chase you up, not to put too fine a point on it. We want to go ahead with a major new work on the artist, and we want to publish next summer. That means we would need a manuscript from you by January or February at the latest. How does that sound?”

With the receiver pressed hard to his ear, Zach stared at the Aubrey drawing in the catalog. It was of a young man with a faraway expression; straight, fair hair falling into his eyes, fine features, a sharp nose and chin. Wholesome, slightly raffish. A face that conjured up images of boys’ school cricket matches; mischief in the dorm room; pilfered sandwiches and midnight feasts. Dennis, it was called, and dated 1937. The third drawing of the young man Zach had seen by Aubrey, and with this one, more strongly than ever, he knew that something was wrong. It was like hearing a cracked bell chime. Something was off-key, flawed.

“How does that sound?” Zach echoed, clearing his throat. Impossible. Out of the question. He hadn’t even looked at his half-constructed manuscript, his reams of notes, for over six months.

“Yes, how does it sound? Are you all right, Zach?”

“I’m fine, yes… I’m…” He trailed into silence. He had abandoned the book-one more project that had petered to nothing-because it was turning out just like every other book about Aubrey he had ever read. He’d wanted to write something new about the man and his work, something that would show a unique insight, possibly the kind of insight only a relative, a secret grandson, would be able to give. Halfway through he’d realized he had no such insight. The text was predictable, and covered well-trodden ground. His love for Aubrey and his work was all too obvious, but that was not enough. He had all the knowledge, all the notes. He had his passion for the subject. But he didn’t have an angle. He should just tell David Fellows that and have done with it, he thought. Let this other Aubrey man get his book published. With a pang, Zach realized he’d probably have to pay back the publication advance, modest as it was. He wondered where on earth he might get that money back from, and almost laughed out loud.

But the picture on the page in front of him kept pulling at his attention. Dennis. What was that expression, on the young man’s face? It was so hard to pin down. One minute he looked wistful, the next mischievous, and then he looked sad, full of regret. It shifted like the light on a windy day, as if the artist couldn’t quite capture it, couldn’t quite commit the mood to paper. And that was what Charles Aubrey did, that was where his genius lay. He could pin an emotion to paper like nobody else; catch a fleeting thought, a personality. Portray it with such clarity and skill that his subjects came to life on the paper. And even when the expression was ambiguous, it was because the mood of the sitter had been the same. Ambiguity itself was something he could draw. But this was different. Wholly different. This looked as though the artist couldn’t decipher, couldn’t recapture the sitter’s mood. It seemed impossible to Zach that Charles Aubrey would produce such an incomplete picture, and yet the pencil strokes, the shading, were like a signature in themselves… But then there was the question of the date, as well. The date was all wrong.

“I’ll do it,” he said suddenly, startling himself. Tension made his voice abrupt.

“You will?” David Fellows sounded surprised, and not quite convinced.

“Yes. I’ll get it to you early next year. As soon as I can.”

“Right… great. Fantastic to hear, Zach. I’ll admit, I’d rather thought you’d hit a wall of some kind with it. You’d sounded so sure you had something really fresh on the subject, but then time started to tick along…”

“Yes, I know. Sorry. But I will finish it.”

“Well, all right then. Great stuff. I shall tell the powers that be that my faith in you was entirely justified,” said David, and behind the words Zach heard the slight misgiving, the gentle warning.

“Yes. It was,” Zach said, his mind churning furiously.

“Well then, I had better get on. And, if I may be so bold, so had you.”

In the lull after the call ended, Zach cleared his dry throat and listened to his mind racing, and almost laughed aloud again. Where on earth could he start? There was one obvious answer, and only one. He looked back at the catalog, and down the page to the provenance of the drawing of Dennis. From a private collection in Dorset. The seller with no name again, just as before. Three pictures of Dennis had now emerged from this mysterious collection, and two of Mitzy as well. All in the last six years. All apparently studies for final paintings that nobody had ever seen. And there was only one place in Dorset that Zach could think to start looking for the source of them. He got to his feet and went upstairs to pack.