A Half Forgotten Song (48 page)

“I know you,” Celeste said, frowning slightly. “You are a cuckoo . . . a cuckoo child . . .” She brushed her hand down Dimity’s cheek, but though her words froze Dimity’s blood, suddenly Celeste smiled, just a tiny bit, just for a second. Then her eyes slid away to roam the room, as if she couldn’t remember where she was, or why. Her arms twitched, shoulders hunching. Dimity swallowed, and looked around to see Charles standing behind her. He drew her to one side.

“I’ve told her about Élodie, but I don’t know . . .” He paused, his face creasing into lines of anguish. “I don’t know if she realizes what I’ve told her. I think I will have to say it again.” His dread at the prospect was audible. Behind him, Delphine’s eyes were the only bright thing in the room; glazed and shining like polished stone.

Charles crouched down to tell Celeste, clasping one of her limp hands in both of his. It was a gesture that betrayed his own need for comfort; Dimity saw it and she longed to hold him. In the pause before he spoke, Dimity and Delphine stood so still they might have been statues.

“Celeste, my darling.” He lifted up her hand and pressed it to his mouth, as if to stop the words. “Do you remember what I told you, last night?”

“Last night?” Celeste murmured. The faintest touch of a smile gave an apology, and she shook her head. “You told me . . . I would be well soon.”

“Yes. And I told you . . . I told you something about Élodie. Do you remember?” His voice shook, and Celeste’s smile vanished. Her eyes darted around the room.

“Élodie? No, I . . . where is she? Where is Élodie?” she said.

“We lost her, my darling.” After he spoke, Celeste stared at him, and her eyes filled with fear.

“What are you talking about?
Òu est ma petite fille?
Élodie!” she called suddenly, shouting the word over Charles’s head. He gripped Celeste’s hand ever tighter; his knuckles were white. Dimity thought he might crack her bones.

“We lost her, Celeste. You and Élodie . . . you ate something that poisoned you. Both of you. We lost Élodie, my love. She is dead,” Charles said, and tears rolled down his face. When she saw them, Celeste paused. She stopped looking around for Élodie, stopped shaking her head in denial. She watched Charles weep and realization spread across her face; the shadow of a loss so huge that it could not be contained.

“No,” she whispered. Beside Dimity, Delphine let out a whimper. She was watching her mother with a gaze so raw and tender it was like her heart had been torn wide open for all to see.

“We lost her,” Charles said again, lowering his head as if in submission, as if to accept whatever punishment she would give.

“No, no,
no
!” Celeste cried, the word rising to a howl that turned the air to ice. With a sob, Delphine ran across to her, and threw herself down beside her mother, wrapping her arms around her. But Celeste fought her, disengaged her arms, and scrabbled to push her away. “Get off me! Let me go!” Celeste told her.

“Mummy,” Delphine moaned, pleading with her. “I didn’t mean to.” But with a final effort Celeste shoved her back, so hard that Delphine fell from the couch to the floor. Celeste sat up as if she would rise, but did not have the strength.

“Élodie!
Élodie!
” She called the name over and over. It was a plea, a command, a wish. And on the floor beside her, Delphine could only huddle, a picture of abject misery, hugging her own knees for comfort. Charles neither moved nor spoke; he had nothing left. Inside, Dimity was falling. She was falling too fast for thought, for words, and at her feet a spatter of urine was spreading across the floor.

D
elphine was sent away to school at the end of the week, the day after her sister’s funeral. She went mutely, quietly, as though she had surrendered all right to an opinion, all right to free will. Dimity stood to one side as Charles hefted her trunk into the back of the car. Celeste emerged from Littlecombe, moving with the careful, small-stepping walk she had adopted since the poisoning; as though she no longer trusted her feet. She was draped in a loose robe, one of her lightweight caftans, but it hung from her now. She was thinner, the sensual curves of her body carved away. She took no trouble to tie a sash around her waist, or arrange her hair, or put on jewelry. Her skin had not regained its glow; her eyes were always red-rimmed. This creature seemed like the ghost of Celeste, as though she had died along with Élodie. She stood motionless when Delphine kissed her cheek and put careful arms around her, and did not return these signs of affection. Charles watched this awful exchange with a distraught expression.

“Good-bye, Mitzy,” Delphine said to Dimity, pressing her marble cheek to Dimity’s. “I’m glad . . . I’m glad you’re here. To look after them. I wish . . .” But she did not say what she wished. She swallowed, and then an eager light kindled in her eyes. “Will you come and visit me? At school? I don’t think I could bear it if nobody did.” Her voice was high, manic with need. “Will you? I could send you the train fare.” Her fingers gripped Dimity’s arm tightly.

“I . . . I’ll try to,” said Dimity. She found it hard to talk to Delphine, hard to look at her. It was near impossible to keep mind and body together when she did.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you,” Delphine whispered, hugging her tightly. She got into the car then, keeping her eyes down, her shoulders slumped.
Celeste can’t forgive Delphine for what happened,
Charles told Dimity later, once Celeste was asleep.
Even though she knows it wasn’t deliberate, she can’t forgive her. Élodie was the littlest, you understand, still her baby, in some ways. And so like her. So like her
.
My little Élodie.
Dimity made him a pie for his dinner, and he didn’t seem to notice that she was always there, where she did not belong.

In the night, Dimity dreamed dark dreams, and every morning she sat up in bed, quite still, and waited for them to subside. But what remained, what was real, was worse than her nightmares, and inescapable. She was careful to empty her mind of thought before she rose, because without an empty head she could not breathe, let alone walk or talk or cook or take care of Charles. Her dreams were of vast black eyes and the stink of vomit. Her dreams were of hearts cut out and left on the floor, with blood seeping from them to stain the boards. Her dreams were of Élodie coming back, coming to The Watch, pointing her finger and shouting
you you you!
Her dreams were of their broken faces and of Delphine’s quiet implosion; and of the way a part of each of them had gone. A part of Charles, even. It had gone wrong. She’d almost shouted it out the day before, having watched him for a full half hour, thumbing through sketches of his daughters with a broken look on his face.
It had all gone wrong.
She had meant to free him—free him to love her and be with her and take her away—but instead Charles was more trapped than ever. It was only by keeping her head carefully empty that Dimity did not shout out things like this. Truths like this. It was only by keeping an empty head that she did not hit the bottom of the abyss she was falling through and break apart like glass.

The autumn rolled on in gentle warmth, with dry breezes to shake and scatter the tiny black seeds from the poppy heads amid the golden crops and parched lawns. Outside the shop and the pub there were mutterings of war, rumors of dark clouds looming in the east; of Poland; of trouble coming; but Dimity paid no attention. Nothing like that mattered, not in Blacknowle. Nothing penetrated this far from the rest of the world; that wide, distant world Charles had promised to show her. She had only to wait, she told herself. She had only to wait a little longer and real life would begin—this limbo state would end. She found Celeste in the garden in a deck chair one day, her legs splayed inelegantly as though she’d been casually discarded there and hadn’t bothered to correct her pose. The sun had no power to warm her, to light her. Her hair was clean and combed, but still she looked half dead. The tendons running down her neck made ridges beneath the skin; she looked raw, denuded. It was easy to think that she was unaware, that she could be ignored. Dimity made a sweep of the house and found Charles not at home, and was about to leave again when Celeste caught her hand with surprising strength.

“You. Mitzy Hatcher. You think I have lost my memory, and it is true, some things are lost to me. But not all things. When I see you there is a feeling in my gut, like a warning. Like looking down from a high place and feeling myself slipping.
Danger,
that is what I feel when I see you. I feel I am in danger.” She kept hold of Dimity’s hand, kept her eyes fixed upon her. Dimity tried to twist her arm free but couldn’t. Celeste’s touch was like iron, cool and hard. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said, and Dimity went cold all over; a sudden, electrifying clench of fear.

“What? No, I—”

“Yes! You are to blame! I saw you, watching Delphine bear it all, while you stayed silent. I saw you, letting her take all of the blame. But without you, she would never have gone picking wild things. Without you, she would never have thought to do so. And without your betrayal of my girls, your pursuit of their father, she would never have had to go alone, and pick the wrong thing. As much as she made this mistake, it was you who caused her to make it. Do not think you can carry on your life without sharing that burden with her. You
must
share it with her!” She threw Dimity’s hand back at her and Dimity felt tears sliding down her face. They were tears of relief, but Celeste misread them and looked oddly satisfied. “There. That is better. I have not yet seen you weep for Élodie, but at least now I see you weep, even if it is for yourself.”

“I never meant to hurt Élodie,” said Dimity. “I never meant for it to happen!”

“But it did happen. My baby is dead. My little Élodie is never coming back . . .” Her voice failed her, and for a while the only sound was her ragged breathing, and the distant hiss of the sea. “How I wish . . .” she said softly, some minutes later. “How I wish we had never come here, to this place. How I wish it. Help me up.”

Dimity did as she was told, and took Celeste’s arm as she rose from the deck chair; she walked with her out of the garden and across the grassy fields towards the sea. “Take me right to the edge. I want to look at the ocean,” said Celeste, and Dimity obeyed her. She walked with a steady step now, and the tremors in her body were far fewer, far gentler. Dimity soon realized that Celeste needed no help to walk, but she kept a firm hold on Dimity’s arm nonetheless, her fingers gripping tightly, her gaze straight ahead, determined. Suddenly Dimity was uneasy, though she could not say exactly why.
Danger,
just as Celeste had said. Some instinct made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. They walked towards the cliff edge, to a point in the path where the beach was some sixty feet below them. Dimity stopped on the path, but Celeste snapped at her. “No! Closer. I want to look down.” Closer they went, until their toes were inches from the blowy air of the edge. Dimity’s throat was so tight she could no longer swallow.

Side by side they stood, and looked down at the beach below, where a handful of holidaymakers were swimming and lounging, their children playing. Celeste pointed to a dark-haired little girl who was digging in the sand near the water’s edge. “There! Look! Oh, couldn’t that be her? Couldn’t that be my Élodie, safe and alive and playing in the sand?” She took a long, shuddering breath and then gave a low moan. “If only it was. If
only
. Oh, wouldn’t it be easier to just step off, Mitzy?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be easier not to live at all?” Dimity tried to step back, but Celeste wouldn’t move.

“No, Celeste.”

“Don’t you think so? Do you feel no guilt, then, for what has happened? You are quite happy to live on, with her gone? I think it would be easier to step off, to fall and to go with her. Far easier.” She gazed at the distant little girl with an awful intensity, her mouth open, an unhealthy sheen on her skin.

“Come away, Celeste! You still have another daughter! What about Delphine?”

“Delphine?” Celeste blinked, looking across at Dimity. “She is my daughter still, but how can I love her as I loved her before? How can I? She meant no harm, but she has done harm. Great harm. And she never needed me, not like Élodie did. She always loved Charles better.”

“She loves
you,
” said Dimity, and then gasped because something speared into her empty head, as it always did when she thought of Delphine. Something so painful that she swayed, tipping precariously towards the open air in front of them. Celeste saw this change in her, and for a second it seemed as though she might smile.

“You do see, don’t you? How much easier it would be.” Just then, Dimity did see. All the long years of her life stretched out in front of her, and this emptiness would have to be her constant companion, because the pain would never go. Things could not be undone. Her dreams would always be dark; the wide world would always be a distant, imagined thing. She would have Valentina’s scorn for company, and nobody else. Charles was not free, and perhaps he never would be. But it was the thought of him that saved her. Rushing through her blood like a drug, like magic.

“No! Let me go!” She used all of her weight to pull free from Celeste, staggering back a few paces to sit down on the turf with a bump. There she sat, and watched. Celeste was still right at the edge. The violence with which Dimity had pulled away made her teeter, and fight for balance. She put out her arms, like fragile, fledgling wings. Wings that could never save her, if she fell. She wobbled, her toes tipping over the edge, breaking the lip of the cliff, and as she turned to look at Dimity the wind caught her hair, and lifted it around her face; a dark veil, a veil of grief.
Go, then, if you want to,
thought Dimity. She stayed still, she watched; she felt the reassuring solidity of the ground beneath her, curled her fingers into the grass, hung on. The wind circled Celeste, and tempted her with the promise of flight. But then her wide eyes settled on Dimity, and they hardened, and she stepped back. Dimity realized she’d been holding her breath, and this time Celeste did smile; a thin smile with no amusement in it, no pleasure.