A Half Forgotten Song (30 page)

“Mitzy, don’t move. Stay exactly as you are,” said Charles. So she didn’t move, even though inside she was smiling and had a tremulous feeling, like she might laugh.
Mitzy, don’t move
.

It was a rapid drawing, one of open-ended lines and suggested space; sparse, hazy. But somehow the glow of the sunlight was captured, and even in Dimity’s scowl the ghost of her delight was hiding, right there on the page. Charles finished it without a flourish, just that slow ceasing of movement through his hand, his pencil; a frown of his own and a quick, hard exhalation of air through the nose. Then he looked up and smiled, and flipped the sketchbook around to show to her. What she saw made her catch her breath, and a rosy blush spread up from her neck. As she had hoped, the drawing was indeed of a woman, not a child, but she was unprepared for how lovely that young woman would be, with her smooth, sunlit skin and her face full of her own private thoughts. Dimity looked up at Charles in amazement.

There was a mirror at The Watch, in the hallway; an ancient one with silvery glass and the mottled spots of age all over it. It was four inches across, and in it Dimity knew her own face of old. Filling the round glass, somewhat shapeless and dim. Like some slave in the belly of a ship, peering out through a porthole. She knew the whites of her own eyes well. Here in this drawing was a different creature entirely. He hadn’t drawn her with blood under her nails, hunched to avoid being noticed, a child who hid along hedgerows. He had seen past all that, and drawn what had been hiding underneath. She gaped at it, at him. As if puzzled by her reaction, Charles took the drawing back.

“You don’t approve?” he said, studying it with a frown. But then, as if he also realized what had changed, his mouth thinned into a thoughtful line and curled up at one side. “The poor ugly duckling, who was bitten and pushed and laughed at,” he said softly. He smiled. Dimity didn’t understand. She heard only the words
ugly,
poor;
she felt crushed. “Oh, no, no! My dear Mitzy! What I meant was . . . the story then goes on to say: ‘It does not matter that one has been born in the hen yard as long as one has lain in a swan’s egg . . .’ That’s what I meant, Mitzy. That the new swan turned out to be the most beautiful of them all.”

“Will you teach me that story?” she said breathlessly.

“Oh, it’s just a silly children’s story. Élodie will read it to you—it’s one of her favorites.” Charles waved a hand dismissively. “Come on. This sketch is a good start, but only a start.”

“A start for what, Mr. Aubrey?” Dimity asked as he stood up, gathered his bag and his folding stool, and strode away towards the stream.

“My next piece, of course. I know exactly what I want to do now. You have inspired me, Mitzy!” Dimity hurried after him, tugging her blouse higher over her shoulders; bewildered, alight, joyful.

She spent the following afternoon on the beach with Élodie and Delphine, and as Élodie hopped in and out of the waves, squealing at the chilly water, she told Dimity snatches of the story of the ugly duckling, and it made Dimity smile all the way through to think that this was how Charles thought of her.

“Everybody knows that story, Mitzy,” Élodie pointed out patiently, studying the bubbling waves that foamed around her angular knees. Delphine was swimming slowly to and fro just offshore, and she laughed, and winked at Dimity, who had rolled up her trousers and was wading around the rocks in the shallows, dropping mussels and edible weed into a bucket.

“And now I know it, too, Élodie. Thanks to you,” Dimity said, happiness making her generous.

“Why do you ask about it now?” the youngest girl asked.

“Oh, no reason. I heard it mentioned, that was all,” Dimity lied easily. She was calm, and felt like she might be glowing.
That is how you love a woman, Charles—you draw her face.

When they returned to Littlecombe late in the afternoon, they found the tea things only half laid out on the kitchen table, and Celeste sitting rigidly on the bench with a paper in her hand, which she was studying with a strained expression.

“What is it, Mummy? Are you all right?” said Delphine, going over to sit beside her.

Celeste swallowed, and frowned as she looked up as if she didn’t recognize them. But then she smiled a little and put the paper down on the table. It was Charles’s latest sketch of Dimity. Dimity’s heart gave one loud, exaggerated beat, like a bell sounding.

“Yes, dearest. I’m fine. I was just tidying up before tea when I found this drawing your father has done. Look at our Dimity, look how lovely she is!” Celeste exclaimed, and though the words were generous, they sounded brittle.

“Gosh—look, Mitzy! You do look very pretty,” said Delphine.

“So he is planning another piece with you in it? Did he say so?” Celeste asked.

“He said something like that, I think,” Dimity said, and though she felt bashful about saying it, a part of her wanted to shout it out—that Celeste had been wrong and Charles did still want to draw her; that he had not moved on and lost interest in her. Celeste took a deep breath and got up from the bench.

“Strange, this turnaround. I had thought it would be that tourist woman next, with her milksop English skin.”

“What tourist woman, Mummy?” said Élodie, opening a packet of biscuits and tipping them out onto a plate. Celeste put her hand to her forehead for a moment, then ran it down to cover her mouth. There were furrows in her brow. “Mummy?”

“Nothing, Élodie. It doesn’t matter.” Celeste put her hands on her hips and surveyed the three of them. “Well! What a gaggle of messy creatures! You’ve been swimming, I see, so you will be hungry.
Alors
—go and get changed and I will finish the tea.
Allez, allez!
” She herded them from the room, her cheeriness keeping those same sharp edges as before, and Dimity noticed that she kept her eyes askance, and would not look her in the face.

D
imity tried to keep the pale blue blouse, but Valentina flew into such a storm when Dimity suggested that it might have blown away that she had to pretend to find it in one of the trees behind the backyard. She got no thanks for returning it, just a scowl and an admonition to peg things more securely.

“You’ve no idea how many meals this blouse has fed you, over the years,” Valentina said. With a pang, Dimity handed it over. She had far more to thank the garment for. It had brought Charles back to her; brought her back from the cliff edge. For the next few days she ran her errands with a springing step, swinging her basket and singing to herself. In the village, one afternoon, she saw Charles sitting outside the pub with the tourist man, the one whose hair was blacker than tar. They were drinking dark ale and talking, and Dimity, giving the pub its usual wide berth, wondered what kind of things men talked about. She wondered if he would tell the man about her—about his muse, and the picture he was planning.

As she walked past the post box across the village green, a hand on her arm startled her out of her thoughts. Celeste’s elegant fingers were clasped tightly around her wrist. The Moroccan woman was hunkered down behind the pillar box as though playing hide-and-seek, her lovely face dangerous with anxiety and temper. Instinctively, Dimity recoiled from her.

“Mitzy, wait. Do you see that man—the one Charles is talking to?” Celeste whispered. She pulled on Dimity’s arm so that they could talk closely without Celeste having to leave her hiding place.

“Yes, Celeste. Yes, I see him,” said Dimity nervously.

“That’s the milksop’s husband. Have you seen her, too? You know who I mean?”

“Yes.” The large-chested woman who looked like a bitch in heat in spite of her prim outfits, she thought.

“Have you ever seen her with Charles? Just the two of them, I mean. Maybe out for a walk, or talking . . . Have you seen them?”

“No, I don’t think so . . .”

“You don’t think so, or you have not?” Celeste pressed. Her fingernails were cutting into Dimity’s skin, but just like with Valentina, suddenly Dimity didn’t dare pull away.

“I haven’t. I haven’t seen them together, I’m sure,” she said. Celeste stared at the two men for a second longer, then fixed her eyes on Dimity. Her grip vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

“Good. That’s good. If you do see them together, you must tell me,” said Celeste. Dimity’s mouth was dry at the strangeness of the encounter, and she was about to refuse when the look in Celeste’s eyes stopped her. There was something like panic, underneath her anger. Something hunted, and frantic. Dimity nodded hurriedly. “Good girl. Good girl, Mitzy.” Celeste turned, and was about to walk away when she paused, and added: “Say nothing of this to the girls. I beg of you.”

The next time she was at Littlecombe, with her hair piled up again in the hope of meeting Charles, Dimity was disappointed to find him out. Since it was a gray day, she agreed to stay indoors and teach Delphine and Élodie how to make strawberry jam. Delphine saw her searching the room as she entered, since the car was parked outside, and gave her a mildly censorious look.

“Daddy’s gone out. Were you supposed to sit for him today?” she asked carefully.

“Oh, no,” Dimity said hurriedly. “I was just hoping for . . . My mother was asking, you see. About the . . . extra money.” She lowered her voice to tell this lie, and was ashamed to see sympathy replace consternation on her friend’s face.

“Yes of course. How silly of me to forget,” Delphine murmured. “Perhaps you can have one or two jars of jam instead, once we’ve made it. Would that help?”

“Yes, thank you.” They smiled at each other, and set about hulling the vibrant red fruit. Delphine asked about Wilf, and Dimity answered at mischievous length, even though in truth she had scarcely thought of him, let alone met with him, since the Aubreys’ return. Soon the kitchen was rich with the scent of strawberries, and when Celeste came downstairs she took a deep breath and smiled. She looked tired, and there were stern lines at the corners of her mouth that Dimity couldn’t recall seeing there before.

“What a glorious perfume, girls!” she said. “Something to remind us it is summer, in spite of the dark weather.” It had indeed been a bleak sort of summer until then, but Dimity had hardly cared to notice. “Well, sunshine or no sunshine, I must have some air. I’ll be in the garden, if you need me.”

Two hours later, when the jam was potted up and Élodie was up to her elbows in soap suds at the sink, scrubbing the pans, Dimity walked carefully to the back door with a brimming cup of tea for Celeste. Through the crack by the jamb she saw a flash of blue, and she paused, recognizing Charles’s peculiar linen tunic, the one dotted and smeared with fingerprints in paint. His voice was soft and measured, as if by speaking too robustly he might damage Celeste, inflict a wound.

“But it’s impossible right now, Celeste, you know that . . . I’ve just started a new piece. I need Mitzy to pose for it, and we need the money . . .”

“You can work over there just as well, I know you can. Think how much work you did the first time you went!”

“Well, I had you to inspire me then,” said Charles. Through the narrow gap, Dimity saw the white gleam of his smile.

“And do you not have me to inspire you now?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We can leave the children with your parents. I’m sure they would look after them, if you explained to them . . .”

“You know they wouldn’t. You know how my mother feels, about our . . . situation.”

“But if you told her . . . if you explained that we need to go away. That
I
need to go away. And we need to be
together,
Charles.
Mon cher.
Together like man and wife, like it was in the beginning. To remember the light and the love and the life between us, when right now all has grown dim . . .”

“Delphine and Élodie are the greatest expressions of that love, Celeste, why leave them behind? They love it there, you know they do . . .”

“Or we could leave them with Mitzy! She is a sensible girl. How old is she now? Sixteen? She could look after them, I know she could. She could come and stay here in the house . . .” Hope flared in Celeste’s voice.

“It’s out of the question.” The words were flat, adamant. “That mother of hers would surely involve herself in some way, and really Dimity is still only a child herself.”
No,
thought Dimity, holding her breath, poised on tiptoes
. I am a swan
. He did not want to go away with Celeste. He wanted to stay in Blacknowle, with her. Joy flared up like fire.

“Please, Charles. I feel like something is dying inside me. I just can’t stay here anymore. And I feel something dying between us, too . . . this distance between us, always growing. I need to go
home
. I need to be where I belong. And I need to be with you, like it was on our honeymoon, like it was when we first met and we were the center of the whole universe. Just you and me, and nobody else . . . No suspicion, no betrayal.” She reached out, grasping Charles’s hand so tightly that her fingers went white. There was a long, hung moment.

“If you’d met Dimity’s mother . . . there would be no question of you wanting to leave our children with her . . .”

“But Dimity can stay here with them—we can pay her well for it! That at least always pleases the mother, no?”

“Pay her well for that, and pay for us to travel again, and all the while earn nothing, for without Mitzy I cannot keep working . . .”

“Mon dieu!”
Celeste spat in sudden rage. “There was a time when there were more things under the sun for you to paint than Mitzy Hatcher!”

“All right, Celeste, calm down—”

“I will not! Always we go where you say, always we live our lives around you, and your work. I gave up
everything
to be with you, Charles, and I ask very little of you, and yet this one thing you could grant me, to make me happy . . . Must I fight and beg, always?” She shook her head in disbelief, and then her eyes blazed. “It is that woman, isn’t it? It’s her that keeps you here!”

“What woman? What are you talking about?”