“Are you there?” she said, but it came out a croak, and the words sounded all wrong to her own ears. The spiders watched and there was no reply, no sound at all. She waited a little longer, uncertain. The silence behind the door was like a cold, dark well, and the sadness rising from it threatened to consume her. She fought it, pushed it back. Let herself believe again. The ginger cat appeared behind her from her bedroom and wound itself around her shins, and in its loud purr she heard Valentina chuckling.
Valentina Hatcher, Dimity’s mother, had always said that her ancestors were Romany, and had traveled the length and breadth of Europe curing ills and casting fortunes. Odd then that Valentina should choose to make her hair yellow, but then, it wasn’t a glossy Gypsy brunette when left natural. It was a sad-looking mousy brown. That smell was one of the first things Dimity remembered-the piercing reek of household bleach, filling the whole house. Valentina did it in a tin tub of water on the kitchen table, with rags all around to soak up spills. Dimity sometimes hovered in the doorway to watch, fascinated but trying to keep out of sight, because if her mother caught her, opened one screwed-up eye and saw her, she would be made to help.
“Hand me that towel-no, the other one! Get it off my neck!” Barking like a terrier. Dimity would have to stand on a chair, wobbling, to mop the thick, vicious stuff from her mother’s skin. She hated it, and cried if she got any on her fingers, even before it started to burn.
When it was done, it did look magnificent, for a while. Like a mermaid’s hair, as bright as gold coins. Valentina usually sat outside to dry it, with her face tipped to the sky and the breeze running by. Skirt rucked up across her sturdy knees so the sun could warm her legs while she smoked a cigarette.
“Tha’ll pull ships onto the rocks sitting there like that, Val Hatcher,” said Marty Coulson one time, walking down the track with his bandy legs and his tweed cap right down to his ears. Dimity didn’t like the way he grinned. Marty Coulson always grinned when he came to The Watch. Yet when Dimity saw him in the village, he looked the other way, as if he couldn’t see her. No grinning then.
“You’re early,” said Valentina, sounding annoyed. Marty stopped by the front door and gave a lopsided shrug. Stubbing out her cigarette, Valentina got to her feet, brushed the grass from her backside. “Mitzy-go on into the village. Buy a cake for tea from Mrs. Boyle.” She fixed Marty Coulson with a flat, unfriendly eye until he reached into his pocket, found a shilling, and gave it to Dimity. She was always happy to run an errand into Blacknowle. To get away from The Watch, even for a while, and see people other than her mother.
Almost as soon as she was big enough to walk she had been sent out alone; certainly by the age of five or six. On simple missions: to buy tea or deliver something mysterious, wrapped up in paper. A charm, or a spell. A new-made besom to build into a door lintel, for luck; shriveled bits of rabbit pelt to be rubbed on warts and then buried, to remove them. People didn’t like to see her at their door, didn’t want it known that they had bought something from Valentina. They took what she brought them and shooed her quickly away, casting their eyes up and down the street. But they couldn’t help themselves. If they needed luck, or a baby, or to get rid of a baby, if they needed a miracle or a catastrophe, then they tried Valentina as well as prayer. Belt and braces, Valentina sneered, when they’d been and gone from the cottage or, as was more usual, had dropped a written request through the door and fled. I hope the sweat makes their backsides itch when they simper at the vicar come Sunday. Dimity learned all the routes around the lanes, paths, and fields by trial and error. She learned where everybody lived, and all of their names; who might give her a halfpenny for her trouble, and who would slam the door on her.
While she was still small, Valentina went with her on more specialized missions, foraging, picking, and finding. Which stream for watercress, good for strength and digestive tonics; never to pick it from a stream that ran through livestock pasture, since the plants picked up their parasites and would pass them on. How to tell wild parsnip from water hemlock, the latter to be dug up with gloves on, the roots grated carefully and rolled into sticky balls with suet and treacle, to make rat bait that sold all year round. Bucketloads, when someone had a plague of them. Like Mr. Brock, at Southern Farm, one time. He bought two buckets full-almost their whole supply. Dimity carried one and Valentina the other, sliding down the hill from The Watch with the handles cutting into their skin and the pails bumping their shins. Got a problem, have you? Valentina asked the man when they got to the yard. He beckoned them over, a queasy look on his face. Lifted up one end of a tin trough to show them a swath of bobbing brown bodies that squirmed from the light. Had a lamb gnawed to the bone before I found it t’other night. Dimity’s skin had crawled like it was covered in ants. The farm terrier was in a frenzy, chasing and snapping at them. Christopher Brock, the farmer’s son, killed one with a cudgel as they scattered the pellets around the yard. Dimity heard the crack of its bones.
They kept chickens in the backyard, and a pig, but sometimes Valentina wanted gulls’ eggs, or ducks’. There was kindling wood to find, furze roots to be dug up and dried. These made the best fuel for the stove, burning with a clean, hot flame. They hunted for mushrooms and crab apples; or a rabbit, taken from someone else’s snare. Dimity hated stealing them. Her fingers shook and she often cut herself on the sharp wire. The wires were usually covered in blood already, and she wondered if it would get into her veins, if it would make her part rabbit. Valentina cuffed her around the ear for being careless, stuffed the rabbit into a canvas bag, and stomped onwards. Dimity hoped that it was the time together that her mother relished, on these outings; the pleasure of teaching and passing on knowledge. But as soon as Dimity knew all that her mother could teach her, she was sent on these missions alone. It seemed that she had been trained up simply to take over.
From a young age, she knew how to tell when her mother wanted something brought straight back, and when she just wanted Dimity out of the way. When it was the latter, she roved far and wide, wandering around caught up in thoughts and stories. To the west, along the coast from The Watch, was a long, deep beach, mostly stones but with sand revealed at low tide. She spent hours on that beach, staring into rock pools. Ostensibly to catch a few prawns for soup, to pick mussels or Irish moss-Valentina used its purplish fronds to make jellies and set-milk puddings. Everywhere Dimity went, she had a cloth bag or a basket with her; somewhere she could stow the things she found.
One day, the sharp edge of a rock pulled a hole through the rope sole of her shoe. She set the shoe to sail on the surface of a pool, watching it bob and wobble. Seeing how many shells she could load onto it until it started to sink. Then she heard voices above her and she looked up as the first pebble hit the rock pool, sending up a splash that was cold on her cheek. Children from the village, up on the cliff. Mostly boys, but the Crane sisters, too, with their eerie, identical faces all excited and smiling. A stick followed the pebble, catching her arm. She scrambled up and was away over the rocks to the foot of the cliff in moments, to where she knew she could not be seen from above. She heard them calling out names, laughing and chanting; saw a few more missiles strike near where she had last been seen. She moved away along the beach, still in the shelter of the cliff. DIMity! she heard them shout. Dim, dim, she’s oh so dim!