A Half Forgotten Song (14 page)

T
he second time she met them was four days later. She’d been torn between her desire to go back and see Delphine again, and her uncertainty—one that bordered on fear. Fear of not understanding them, not behaving the right way, of what Valentina might say if she ever found out about the drawing; that sketch that had seemed to capture a little bit of her soul, trapping it forever on the paper. At fourteen, Dimity no longer had the body of a child. She had breasts, still growing, that felt bruised all the time. Valentina pinched them sometimes, grinning, amused by them for some reason, and the unusual pain made Dimity feel sick in the pit of her stomach. Her hips had spread—so quickly that rose-colored marks appeared in the skin, and then faded to leave faint silvery stripes. She walked with a sway that slowed her rapid gait, so that some heads that had once turned away when she went into the village now turned towards her instead. In some ways, Dimity found that worse. She was not ready to be looked at the way their visitors sometimes looked at her mother, when they arrived at The Watch with their hair slicked down and their boots pulled on hastily, not laced properly. Soon to be kicked off again.

She made her way to the wide beach that lay along the coast, west from Blacknowle; taking the long route inland because a group of boys were hanging about on the cliff path. They still threw things and called her names, but they made other suggestions now, too. They grabbed at her, tried to pull up her skirt or blouse; unbuttoned their trousers and came swaggering over with the floppy lengths of their dicks waggling to and fro, or sometimes poking up, stiff as an accusatory finger. She was still taller than most of them; could hit just as hard and run as fast. But the time would come when that would change, she guessed, and on instinct she avoided them more than ever before. Wilf Coulson was with them that time. He saw her from a distance, but he didn’t wave or call out, or alert the others. He was still as thin as a lath, still a boy, still plagued by his sinuses. When he saw her, he stuffed his skinny hands into his pockets and turned his back; deliberately didn’t look or draw attention to her as she quickly widened her route and dipped out of sight behind a fold in the land. She would give him something for this loyalty, when she saw him next. She was always mixing up new treatments for his nose, or things to help him grow, but what he wanted more often than not was a kiss.

It was low tide—the full moon had just passed, towing the water far out from the shore to reveal a narrow arch of dark brown sand. With a bucket looped on one arm, Dimity made her way along the water’s edge, barefoot, setting her feet down as carefully and gently as she could so as not to startle her prey. It was a still day, warm and bright. Through the shallow water, her feet were luminous white; and the sand, carved into hard ridges by the water, felt good on her soles. There was no sound but the wheeling cries of gulls overhead, and the gentle slosh of her stealthy steps; the water was sparkling. Where the sun warmed the sand, it smelled glassy and clean. The holes she was looking for were no more than an inch or so across. If they felt the vibration of her approach, the razor clams, with a contemptuous squirt of water, dug themselves deeper into the sand, out of reach. In her right hand Dimity carried an old, thin-bladed carving knife, bent into a crook at its tip. When she spotted a hole, she placed her feet on either side of it, softly, softly, crouched down, and, with a quick stab and twist, pulled the clam from the sand before it could escape. The creatures hung disconsolately out of their shells, bubbling and reaching, trying to find something to cling to, to pull themselves to safety. She had ten in her bucket already when she heard people coming, and knew that the harvest was ruined.

Four figures—two large, two smaller—walking towards her from the opposite end of the beach. The children were squealing, running in crisscross patterns around their parents. Feet thumping into the hard sand, splashing the water high onto their dresses. Dimity could feel the vibrations through her own feet as they got nearer, and when she looked down, a few telltale puffs of sand and water marked the retreat of the clams. With a flash of annoyance, she looked up again, and then remembered that Delphine had said she had a sister. She realized who they were. Irritation became confusion and caused her cheeks to flare. There was no way she could turn away, nowhere to hide. In that instant Delphine recognized her, and ran ahead of the others to meet her. Half happy, half awkward, Dimity raised her hand in greeting.

“Hi, Mitzy! I thought it was you. How are you? What are you doing?” the girl said breathlessly, splashing to a stop in front of her. The hem of her dress was soaked six inches above her knees with water. The dress was light blue with yellow flowers and a neat, scalloped collar; and the cardigan she wore over it had pretty pearl buttons. Dimity noticed them enviously, and was relieved that there was a good excuse, this time, for her being barefooted.

“I was catching razor clams. Only . . . they live in the sand, and if they hear you coming they run and hide, so I won’t catch any more,” she said, proffering the bucket where her ten clams lay helpless.

“You think they heard you? Oh, no!” Delphine covered her mouth with one hand in realization. “It was us, wasn’t it? Last time I made you throw away your crayfish, and now we’ve scared the clams!” She seemed to think for a moment, chewing her lip in consternation.

“It’s no bother,” said Dimity, embarrassed by her concern. “I’ve got a good few—”

“You’ll have to come to lunch. It’s the only answer—and the best one! Let me just ask!”

“Oh, I can’t—” But Delphine had turned back to her approaching family, and called out to them.

“Mitzy can come for lunch, can’t she? We’ve scared off all the clams by being noisy!”

Her sister was the first one to reach them. Younger than Delphine by several years, more lightly built, and darker. Darker skin, dark brown hair, and matching eyebrows that gave her face a serious cast. Her expression was one of natural suspicion. She had intent black eyes that moved swiftly over Dimity, assessing with an assuredness beyond her years.

“
You’re
the one Daddy drew,” she said. “Delphine said you’d never done a clapping song before. How come? What do they do at your school, then?”

“I’ve seen other girls do it, I just never . . .” Dimity shrugged. The girl she assumed was Élodie kinked her eyebrows into a contemptuous shape.

“Couldn’t you learn it? It’s
easy,
” she said.

“Élodie, do be quiet,” said Delphine, giving her sister a censorious nudge. By now the girls’ parents had reached them, and Dimity, thinking to avoid embarrassment, looked at the woman instead of the man. She caught her breath in an audible gasp. The girls’ mother was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her life. More beautiful than the woman in the Ovaltine poster taped up in the shop window. More beautiful than the postcard of Lupe Vélez that had once been passed around among the village boys—Dimity had caught a glimpse of it during its brief sojourn in Wilf’s pocket. “This is our mother, Celeste,” Delphine said, smiling, clearly pleased by Dimity’s reaction.

Celeste had an oval face with a delicate lower jaw, full lips in a perfect bow, and black hair hanging down, thick and straight, around her shoulders. Her skin was a pale golden brown, flawless, but most arresting of all were her eyes. In spite of her dark coloring, and the dense, sooty lashes around them, her eyes were a pale blue-green, huge and clear. They were almond-shaped, and seemed to shine from her face with their own unearthly light, brighter even than the summer sky above her. Dimity stared.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mitzy. I have never heard the name Mitzy before. Is it a local name?” Celeste’s voice was deep and accented—not an accent that Dimity had heard before, or could place.

“Dimity. Short for Dimity,” she managed to say, still terrified and fascinated by the woman.

“
Dimity?
That’s a silly name!” said Élodie, clearly nonplussed that somebody else should be the center of attention.

“Élodie! You will mind your manners,” said Charles Aubrey, the first time he’d spoken. The little girl scowled resentfully, and Dimity felt gratified.

“I liked Charles’s picture of you and my Delphine. So pretty, playing together like that. You are most welcome to come and eat lunch with us. I hope you will? To make up for him not asking your permission,” said Celeste. She shot Aubrey a mildly chastening look, but he merely smiled.

“If I’d asked, the moment would have been lost,” he said.

“There are worse things, my love. Well, then. Let us walk on and leave this young girl to her hunt. You know the way to the house, of course? Come at midday and eat with us. I insist.” She looped her hand through Charles’s arm and they walked on, before Dimity could collect herself sufficiently to speak. Valentina might have a visitor, she thought desperately, or one of the moods that made her drink herself to sleep in the afternoon. She might get away without being questioned, if she was lucky.

“See you later, Mitzy.” Delphine waved. Élodie turned up her nose and moved away, stepping delicately now, as though to show superiority through decorum. Too late, Dimity realized that the front of her blouse was wet and sandy from the clam picking, and was sticking to her midriff. Too late she remembered that she hadn’t brushed her hair that morning. She raked her fingers through it in agitation, and stared after the figures moving along the beach. Celeste had slim arms and a tiny waist above broad hips; she moved like deep water—smoothly, gracefully. Her beauty caused a pang of some unidentifiable emotion in Dimity, and as she stood there, admiring her and fiddling with her own ragged appearance, the artist man looked back at her. A long, deliberate look over his shoulder, much more than a glance; too far away by then for her to guess at his expression.

Dimity lingered on the beach for a while. There was no point carrying on, since all the clams would have gone deep, but she didn’t want to follow the family, either. She went farther up the beach, hitched her skirt higher, and sat down where the sand was dry enough. With a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, she watched Delphine and her family until they were tiny, and she could just make them out as they turned and began to climb up to the path. The artist put his hand in the small of Celeste’s back to guide her, then reached out for Élodie’s hand, and held on to it as they picked their way over the rocks. This was a new kind of father. Kind and strong, not like Wilf Coulson’s dad, and lots of the other dads in the village, who were often sour and glowering. This was how her own father might have been. She tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Élodie’s age and have a man like Charles Aubrey reach out to take her hand when the ground got rough.

As noon approached, no visitors arrived at The Watch. Dimity combed her hair as best she could—it was almost impossible without washing the salt out of it first. She put on a clean blouse and tried to keep out of her mother’s way. Valentina was in the kitchen with a pair of newly skinned rabbits, scraping the underside of the skins with vicious strokes of the knife, ready for curing. Her face was red and sweaty, tendrils of damp hair falling into her eyes. When immersed in a task like this, she worked with a frightening intensity and a dull, angry light in her eyes. It was a bad time to bother her, to be seen, or dare to ask anything. Dimity happened to peek around the doorjamb just as Valentina paused, straightening up to stretch her back and push her hair behind her ears. The room stank of dead meat, and Valentina’s flat glare caught her.

“You’d better have done what I asked you, and not have been mooning about all morning. You’d better have finished digging those spuds out or I swear, I’ll skin you next of all,” she said, biting out the words.

“I have, Ma. It’s all done.”

Without a word, Valentina went back to her scraping, and Dimity thought about taking her leave, or perhaps making up some errand. In the end she just slipped away, since Valentina was caught up in thoughts that had nothing to do with her.

T
he front door of Littlecombe was wide-open, and as Dimity approached, she saw that the back door, opposite it along the hall, was open, too. Air surged through the house, creating a moving tunnel that seemed to draw her on when she hesitated on the threshold. She still wasn’t sure that the invitation to lunch was real. There were voices from the kitchen, and laughter, and when she knocked, Celeste’s lovely face appeared around the doorway, smiling.

“Come in, come in!” she said. She was drying her hands on a cloth, and the wind picked up her hair and floated it in front of her eyes. With a chuckle, she brushed it away. “I love to feel the air moving like this, right through the building. You English always have such stuffy houses! I hate that.”

Not sure if she was being reprimanded, Dimity followed Celeste into the kitchen, where the table was set for five and a bottle of wine was already open. Dimity had never had wine before—not poured from a bottle, into a glass. Wine was what her mother drank when a visitor had brought some with him—and that was rare. Dimity far preferred the cider they made from the apples of the gnarled tree beside the cottage. Popping open their skins because there was so much juice inside them. She fought the wasps for them every day from August through to September, brushing away their drunken belligerence as they staggered from fruit to bubbling fruit.

She thought about The Watch, with its heavy thatch, thick walls, and small windows. This was a different place indeed. Light poured in through wide sash windows, and the walls had fresh white paint on them, not yellowed with age or dirt. The floor was laid with red clay tiles; the lower portion of the walls clad in wainscoting painted a soft green color. It was the first time Dimity had ever been inside somebody else’s house. She knew their back doors well; their front steps; their rooflines from a distance. But never before had she been invited inside.

Élodie had decided to play the hostess. She made Dimity sit down, and complimented her on her blouse, and fussed around her and brought her a glass of water, all with only the merest hint of disdain. Delphine had an apron tied neatly over her sundress, and was standing on a small stool at the stove, stirring something that steamed and smelled good. She turned and smiled at Dimity.