“He painted her?” she whispered, and sounded so desolate that Zach made no reply. There was a bloated pause. “But… from a distance, you say?”
“Yes-the figure is only a couple of inches high, in the picture.”
“And no sketches of her? No sketches done from up close?”
“No. Not that I’ve ever seen.” Miss Hatcher seemed to relax and breathe more easily.
“Well, then-she could have been just anyone he’d happened to meet. He was always very interested in people, very easy to talk to. Perhaps I do remember your grandparents, now… perhaps I do. Did your grandfather have black hair? Very black-black as ink?”
“Yes! Yes he did!” Zach smiled, delighted.
They were all together-Charles and Celeste and the two little girls, and this new couple, a pair of strangers Dimity had never seen before. Holidaymakers-there were always some. She’d come along the lane because it had rained in the night and the fields were muddy-the red clay mud of the peninsula where The Watch stood; the white gluey mud of the chalk hills to the west. The strange woman wore loose slacks of a lovely fawn twill, and a fine white blouse tucked into them; and even though her hand was looped through the man’s arm, it was obvious how rapt she was, leaning towards Charles as if she couldn’t help herself. Pulled like the tide. Dimity’s own skirt was torn at the hem, and her sleeves picked by brambles. Sea salt from the breeze had made her hair a wild mess like a crop of bladder wrack, clinging to her skull, and as she approached she tucked it behind her ears, ashamed. She didn’t want to speak to them, to the strangers. She hung back, skirted around them, wished she could hear what they were saying. The stranger spoke and Charles laughed, and Dimity felt hot and angry about it. He looked her way, then-the stranger. The light caught on his hair, or rather, it didn’t. It vanished into it-she’d never seen hair so black before. Blacker than pitch, blacker than a crow’s wing, with no hint of green or blue like the sullen fire of those feathers. He caught her eye but then looked away again, back to Aubrey and Celeste. Dismissing her, like she was nothing. Again, that heat, that anger. But then Delphine saw her, came over to her waving with the fingers of one hand, wanting to go off together. So Dimity never found out how long they stayed together, talking; her Charles and this strange woman who offered herself to him with every tiny move she made.
“So you suppose she broke her wedding vows, do you?” Miss Hatcher said. Zach shrugged.
“Well, they were engaged but not actually married at the time of the visit. It would have been wrong of her even so, of course, to betray my grandfather. But these things happen, don’t they? Life is never black-and-white.”
“They happen, they happen,” Miss Hatcher repeated, but Zach couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with him or not. Her expression was sad, and Zach tried to move the conversation on.
“Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps she just remembered him fondly, and that was as far as it went. I know I don’t really look like him… plus he’s meant to have had this animal magnetism. I sure as hell don’t have it.” He smiled. Miss Hatcher flicked her eyes over him appraisingly.
“No, you don’t,” she said. Zach felt slightly crushed.
“I do… paint, though. So perhaps my artistic side…”
“Are you a good painter?” Outside, the sun came out and lit her face suddenly, falling into the hollows under her eyes, in her cheeks. Her face was a delicate heart shape, her eyes wide-set, the chin a soft point, now all but lost in pouched skin. Zach felt the sudden shock of recognition, a physical jolt.
“I know your face,” he blurted out inadvertently. The old woman looked at him, and the trace of a smile warmed her expression.
“Perhaps you should do,” she said.
“Dimity Hatcher? Mitzy?” he said, astonished. “I can’t believe it! When you said he drew you all the time, I didn’t realize…” He shook his head, stunned. That she was alive. That he had found her, and that it seemed nobody else ever had. Now she was smiling, delighted; she tipped her chin up, made some effort to straighten her shoulders. But the sun dipped back behind clouds, and it was gone. That ghost of remembered beauty. She was a bent old woman again, colorless, self-consciously smoothing the length of her hair against her chest like a girl.
“Glad to know I’m not so very changed, after all of it,” she said.
“Yes,” Zach said, as convincingly as he could. There was a pause; his mind was racing. “I’ve got a picture of you hanging in my gallery at home! I look at it every day, and now here we are, face-to-face. It’s… amazing!” He couldn’t keep from smiling.
“What picture is it?”
“It’s called Mitzy Picking. It’s of you from behind, but you’re almost looking over your shoulder. Not quite, but almost, and you’re putting something into a basket…”
“Oh, yes, I remember that one.” She clasped her hands together, pleased. “Yes, of course. I never really liked it. I mean, I couldn’t see the point of it, not seeing my face and all.”
She hadn’t been picking at all, she’d been sorting. Delphine had been out to collect herbs and collared Dimity as she passed, asking her to check her spoils before she took them into the kitchen. She’d been on her way into the village, on an errand for Valentina. How that woman would storm and swear if Dimity took too long, so she ran her fingers through the plants quickly, removing the dandelion leaves that Delphine had thought were lovage, picking the chickweed out of the chamomile. All morning a tenacious song had been running through her head. It came again then, a low mumble on her lips, a sign of impatience. As I were a-walking for my recreation, all down by the river I chanced for to stray; I heard a fair maid making loud lamentation, singing Jimmy will be slain in the wars I be feared… She stopped suddenly, heard the faintest echo of the tune carrying on behind her. In a deep voice, a man’s voice-his voice. Prickles like the lick of a cat’s tongue went roughly down her spine, and she froze. In the silence then Dimity heard the pencil, softly scraping the paper. A dry caress. She knew not to move, knew that would annoy him. So she carried on, her mind no longer on the job, letting grass stems stay amid the chives and buttercup pass for cress. And all the while she could feel him behind her, feel his eyes upon her, and as if all her senses had come alive she noticed the sun shining hotly on her hair, and the touch of a breeze on the skin of her lower back where her blouse had ridden up. A small area of skin that suddenly seemed utterly, wantonly naked. In her hand she had posies, her cheeks were like roses… she sang on, and behind her he answered the tune, and she felt it fill her heart, fill it up to bursting.
“What color was your hair?” Zach asked suddenly. Dimity blinked, and seemed to come back from far away. “Sorry, that must sound very rude…”
“Charles said it was bronze,” she said quietly. “He said when the light shone on it, it looked like burnished metal; like a statue of Persephone come alive.” In Zach’s mind he saw all the drawings-all the many, many drawings of Mitzy, and he put this color into the wild hair described by Aubrey’s long, lavish pencil lines. Yes. He could picture it now, as if the color had always been there, waiting for him to see it.
Suddenly, there was a muffled sound from upstairs. The thump of something being dropped, the smaller thump of it bouncing, just once, and the shuffling creak of a footstep. Dimity turned her eyes to the ceiling and waited, as if something else was coming. Puzzled, Zach also glanced up at the sooty rafters as if he might be able to see through them.