A Half Forgotten Song (24 page)

“And you’ve really never been in a car before?” Charles asked, winding down his window and gesturing for her to do the same.

“Only the bus, once or twice, and sometimes a tractor trailer to go potato picking, or cobbing before the harvest,” she said, suddenly apprehensive. Charles laughed.

“A tractor trailer? I really don’t think that counts. Well, hang on tight. We’ll go up to the Wareham road so I can really open her up.”

Dimity could hardly hear him above the thunder of air through the open windows and the roar of the engine on top of that. As they swerved along the lane between rows of Blacknowle’s cottages, she saw Wilf and some of the village lads lingering by the shop. She put her chin up haughtily as the car sped past, and was pleased to see them watch, agog, as the sunshine glanced from the blue paintwork, and the wind caught at tendrils of her hair. Wilf raised his fingers, surreptitiously, but though Dimity caught his eye for a second, she deliberately looked away.

“Friends of yours?” Charles asked.

“Not as such, no,” Dimity said. Charles treated them to several loud blasts of the horn and then glanced at her, merrily, and Dimity laughed—could not help herself; it bubbled up inside her like something boiling over, mixing with her nerves and bursting out, irrepressibly.

At the top road Charles turned left towards Dorchester, and with a lurch of the gears they were away, gaining speed until Dimity thought they couldn’t get any faster. The sides of the road were a rich green blur, the landscape seemed turned to liquid, flowing by. Only the sky and the far pale sea were unchanged and Dimity gazed out at them as they roared along, swerving out around a sluggish bus and other, slower cars. The air through the window was warm but still cooling compared to the heat of the day, and she put her hands up to her hair, twisting it into a knot and holding it so that the back of her neck would dry. From the corner of her eye she saw Charles look at her, keenly, dividing his attention between her and the road.

“Mitzy, don’t move,” he said, but the words were almost lost in the din.

“Beg pardon?” she shouted back.

“Never mind. Nowhere to stop just here, anyway. Will you do that for me later—twist your hair up like that? Exactly like that? Can you remember how you did it?” he said.

“Of course I can.”

“Good girl.” Valentina appeared in Dimity’s mind, and she chewed her lip as she thought about her, and how to phrase what she felt she must. Word of the Aubreys’ return had carried to The Watch on the grubby tide of its visitors, like the driftwood and trash that swept along on the channel currents. Dimity could not keep it a secret.

“My mother will say . . .” she began, but Charles cut her off with a wave of his hand.

“Don’t worry. There’ll be money to keep Valentina Hatcher on our side,” he said, and Dimity relaxed, relieved not to have to ask.

When they got to Dorchester they made a quick circuit of the town before taking the same road back in an easterly direction, every bit as rapidly as before. Dimity held her fingers in the streaming wind, playing with the feel of it, letting it force her hand back on her wrist, then holding it steady, flat; then letting it flex her fingers into a fist.

“I understand it now,” she said, almost to herself.

“What do you understand?” Charles asked, leaning closer to hear her better.

“How a bird flies. And why they do love it so,” she said, never taking her eyes from her hand as it cut through the rushing air. She could feel the artist watching her, and she let him, not challenging his gaze by returning it. She stared at her hand as it flew, her fingertips glowing in the sunlight; she breathed in the fiery smell of the car and felt the rumble of the world going by, and to her it seemed a wholly new place, a place of a scale and wonder that she hadn’t known before. A place where she might fly.

C
harles had in mind a painting of the soul of English folklore. He told them this over lunch one day, as Dimity filled her mouth with chunks of cheese and pickles, piled onto slices of tough bread that Delphine had made herself. It was chewy, but she had put fresh rosemary into the dough, as Dimity had suggested, so the flavor was as delicious as the aroma.

“I painted a Gypsy wedding in France. It was one of the best things I have done,” the artist said, without pride or modesty. “Somehow you could taste the earthiness, the connection between those people and the land they lived on. Their gaze—I mean their inner gaze—was on the here, the now. They could feel their roots reaching down into the ground, and back through the years, even though some of them had no idea who their fathers had been, or their fathers’ fathers. Never looking too far ahead, never looking too far afield. That is the key to happiness. Realizing where you are, and what you have right now, and being grateful for it.”

He paused to take another mouthful of bread. Celeste took a steady breath, and smiled slightly when he looked up. Dimity got the impression that she might have heard the speech before. When she looked at his daughters, they both wore glazed, faraway expressions. Either they had heard it before as well, or they weren’t bothering to listen. The speech was all for her, she realized. “Take Dimity here,” he said, and her own name made her jump. “She has been born and raised here. This is her land and these are her people, and I’m sure she would never think to leave. Would never assume the grass was greener elsewhere. Would you, Mitzy?” His eyes were on her and their gaze was steady, compelling. Dimity started to nod her head, then understood he wanted a negative reply, so shook it instead. Charles tapped a finger on the tabletop to show his approval, and Dimity smiled. But Celeste gave her an appraising look.

“It is easy to see things as they appear to be, and to make guesses, and form opinions. Who is to say that they are correct? Who is to say the happiness of the Gypsies wasn’t in your own mind, and then in your hand as you painted them?” she said to Charles, with a challenging tilt of her chin.

“It was real. I only painted what was there, in front of me . . .” Charles was adamant, but Celeste interrupted him.

“What you
saw
in front of you. What you
thought
you saw. Always, there are questions of . . .” She waved her hand, searching for the right word. “Perception.” Charles and Celeste locked eyes, and Dimity saw something pass between them, something she couldn’t decipher. A muscle twitched in the corner of Charles’s jaw, and there was a tense, angry look on Celeste’s face.

“Don’t start that again,” he said, with stony calm. “I told you it was nothing. You’re imagining things.” The silence at the table grew strained, and when Celeste spoke again her voice was far harder than her words.

“I was merely entering the discussion,
mon cher
. Why not
ask
Dimity, instead of
telling
her how she feels about it? Well, Mitzy? Do you want to always live here? Or do you think it might be better to try living somewhere else? Do you have strong roots, roots that keep you tied to this place?”

Dimity thought again of the long winter—swaths of sea mist rolling in like clouds sunk low, so that the whole world contracted to the sullen earth in front of her feet; a fine layer of ice on the slurry pit by Barton’s farm, which broke when she stumbled onto it, splashing her boots with foul black water; grounded fishermen cutting the reeds for thatch instead, working in rows, their arms swinging to and fro, the swish and crunch of their scythes loud in the deep quiet. Days when the whole world seemed ended and dead, and Dimity made her way to and from The Watch with her canvas coat pulled tight around her, the hems of her dungarees soaking wet, and her old felt hat dripping from its brim; hearing the wheeze and whistle of swans in flight above her head, invisible in the murk. How she longed to fly away with them, longed to fight her way free of the stifling cold and the way each day started and ended the same. There were roots indeed, holding her tightly. As tightly as the scrubby pine trees that grew along the coast road, leaning their trunks and all their branches away from the sea and its battering winds. Roots she had no hope of breaking, any more than those trees had, however much they leaned, however much they strained. Roots she had never thought of trying to break, until Charles Aubrey and his family had arrived and given her an idea of what the world was like beyond Blacknowle, beyond Dorset. Her desire to see it was growing by the day; throbbing like a bad tooth and just as hard to ignore.

She realized that Charles and Celeste were both waiting for her reply, and she found a way to answer that was honest but ambiguous.

“My roots are here, and very deep,” she said, and at this Charles nodded again, satisfied, and cast a glance at Celeste, but Celeste watched Dimity a while longer, as if reading the vast unspoken truth behind the words. If indeed she saw it, though, she said nothing; she held out her hand for Élodie’s empty plate, which the child handed to her without a word.

“Where shall we go then, Mitzy? Where is most rich with the folklore of this place? We’ll go somewhere and I’ll draw you surrounded by the old magic,” said Charles. Dimity felt pride swelling her up, to be consulted, to be the expert. Then she realized she had no idea where to suggest, and wasn’t really sure what he meant by
the old magic
. She thought rapidly.

“Saint Gabriel’s chapel,” she said abruptly. It was a ruin in a copse on a hill, said to be haunted. The village boys held vigils in it, daring one another to spend a night there alone, with no campfire, no flashlight. Huddled in among the damp green stones, hearing all kinds of fell voices in the shifting wind.

“Is it far?”

“Not far. An hour to walk it, I suppose,” she said.

“We’ll go this afternoon. I’d like to see the place, get a feel for it.” His face had come alive with a kind of inner fervor, an intense enthusiasm. “Will your mother spare you?”

“If there were coins for her, she’d spare me forever,” Dimity murmured, then felt stupid for saying so. She remembered the idealized description of Valentina she’d given them last summer, and remembered that only Charles had met her—only he knew that it had been half-truths at best. “That is . . . I mean . . .” she floundered, but Celeste put out her hand and patted Dimity’s.

“Only a fool would take coins in exchange for something priceless.” She smiled, but then she looked at Charles and the smile faded a little. “You said you would take the girls to Dorchester this afternoon. To buy new sandals.”

“It’s not urgent, is it? Tomorrow we’ll go, girls,” he said to them, with a nod.

“That’s what you said yesterday,” Delphine protested gently. “My toes are touching the ground over the front of mine.”

“Tomorrow, I promise. The light is perfect today. Softer than it has been.” He seemed to talk almost to himself, turning his gaze to the tabletop. Feeling some scrutiny, Dimity looked at Celeste and found the woman watching her with a strange expression. When their eyes met, Celeste smiled and went back to collecting up the plates, but not quickly enough for Dimity to mistake what she’d seen. Celeste had looked worried. Almost afraid.

F
or three weeks the weather set fair, with a warm sun and soft breezes. Charles drove them all west to Golden Cap, the highest cliff along the Dorset coast. They climbed up through woods and fields, lugging heavy baskets packed with food, with sweat blooming through their clothes, to burst out onto the summit into fresher air and an endless view that took their breath away.

“I can see France!” said Élodie, shading her eyes with her hands.

“No you can’t, you dope,” said Delphine with a chuckle.

“What’s that then?” her sister demanded, pointing. Delphine squinted into the distance. “A cloud,” she declared.

“No clouds today. I have decided it,” said Celeste, spreading out a striped blanket and unpacking the picnic.

“Ha! Then it must be France,” said Élodie, triumphant.

“
Vive la France
. Come and eat your lunch.” Celeste smiled. “Dimity, come. Sit. Ham sandwich, or egg?”

When the picnic was finished, Charles lay back, tipped his hat forward over his face and slept. Celeste gave up swatting at the flies and wasps that had come to feast on the leftovers and lay back as well, resting her head on Charles’s stomach and shutting her eyes. “Oh, how I love the sun,” she murmured. The five of them whiled away the afternoon there, the three girls watching the drowsy bees sway from flower to flower amid the furze and heather; spotting ships far out to sea; waving and hallooing the other walkers and holidaymakers who appeared on the Cap. Elderly couples with dogs; young men and women with their fingers entwined; families with sturdy children, flushed from the climb. As they nodded and smiled, Dimity realized that they didn’t know. These strangers didn’t know that she was not an Aubrey but a Hatcher; there was nothing to betray the fact that she was not one of the family. And so, for a while, she
was
one of them, she belonged with them, and this made her happier than she had ever known. She could not keep from smiling, and had to turn her face away from Delphine at one point because the feeling got so strong it prickled her nose, and threatened to turn into tears.

As the shadows lengthened at last, they packed up the hampers and made their way down from the summit. They drove the short distance to Charmouth and spent an hour or so hunting in vain for fossils before taking tea and scones at a little café beside the rocky shore. Dimity’s skin felt dry and stretched from a day in the sunshine, and she could tell from the quiet way they spoke that the Aubreys were feeling the same pleasant weariness that she was. Celeste didn’t even scold when Élodie piled so much cream and jam onto her scone that she couldn’t fit it into her mouth, and dropped a huge blob of it down her blouse. As if startled that there was no remark about this, Élodie pointed it out.

“Mummy, I’ve spoiled my blouse,” she said, mumbling around the hefty mouthful.

“That was stupid, hmm?” said Celeste, not breaking off her distant gaze, which was fixed on a high, floating gull. Delphine and Dimity exchanged a glance and laughed, and proceeded to pile their own scones every bit as high as Élodie’s. Dimity’s stomach churned slightly, unused to such rich food, but it was too good to pass up.