A Half Forgotten Song (22 page)

“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.

D
ucking 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.”