“Why do you care so much? I’ll tell her I’m working on a book about him, I promise. And if she’s still happy to talk to me, then that should be fine by you as well, shouldn’t it?” he said.
Hannah seemed to consider this. She flipped the ledger closed again, having not written anything new in it. Behind Zach, Ilir returned with a plastic bucket full of eggs. He made up a box of the five on the desk and one from the bucket.
“Still warm,” he said, closing his hand briefly around the egg.
“Thank you,” said Zach.
“One seventy-five,” Ilir told him. Zach looked up in surprise, and Hannah bridled.
“They’re organic and free-range. Not certified organic, but that’s just a question of bloody paperwork… I’m working on it. But they are organic,” she said.
“I’m sure they’ll be delicious,” said Zach, wondering what he would do with them. Give them to Pete to use in the pub kitchen, he supposed. “I like the sheep pictures,” he said, as he turned to go. “Local artist?”
“Very local. Want to buy one?” she said laconically.
“You did them? They’re really good. Maybe next time.” He shrugged apologetically, and wished he did have sixty pounds to spend on one of them. “I paint as well. And draw. Well, I used to. I have a gallery now, in Bath. It’s shut at the moment, though. Because I’m… here.” He looked back at the pair of them. Ilir was hovering near Hannah, putting the fresh eggs one by one into the tray. Hannah was watching Zach with that resolute silence of hers. “Well, I should probably get going,” said Zach. “I can see you’re busy. Okay. Bye. Thanks for the eggs. Bye.” He turned to go, and as he did, a smile flickered over Hannah’s face, quick like the sunshine that day.
On Tuesday he was at the butcher’s first thing, before it was even open. He bought the brand-new heart and went straight down to The Watch, not thinking that Dimity might not be up yet until he’d banged on the door and it was too late. When she opened it, he held the heart out to her.
“The butcher told me this bullock was slaughtered yesterday afternoon. It couldn’t be any fresher unless I’d gone to the abattoir and caught it as it dropped out,” he said with a smile. Dimity took the heart and unwrapped it, and held it in her hand. Zach noticed with a faint shudder that it smeared blood on her mittens, and that a dark clot was oozing from one of the vessels hanging from it. He caught the nauseating tang of iron in his nostrils, and tried not to inhale too deeply. Dimity performed the same tests on this heart as she had the first, then flashed Zach a small, pleased smile. With a flurry of long hair and skirts, she turned and vanished into the house, leaving the door open behind her.
Zach peered through into the hallway. “Miss Hatcher?”
“The pins?” Her voice drifted through from the kitchen. Zach stepped inside and shut the door behind him.
“Right here,” he said, handing them to her. She was sitting at the small table in the kitchen, and took the box of pins from Zach without another word. She seemed entirely focused on the heart and what she planned to do with it, and Zach sank quietly into the chair opposite her, fascinated. With a single deft movement, the old woman slit the heart open down one side with a paring knife, the blade of which looked wicked sharp. She wiped away the clots of blood inside it with her fingertips, and then opened the box of pins, covering it with rusty fingerprints. Under each of her nails was a dark red crescent. Humming softly, she pierced the wall of the heart from the inside with a pin, pushing until its head was flush to the meat. Mesmerized, Zach watched and didn’t dare to ask. Snatches of the song she sang were audible, and decipherable, but most of it was a wordless mumble of her buzzing s sounds and drawled vowels. Zach leaned closer, struggling to hear.
“Bless this house, and keep it whole… bless this house… keep thatch, keep stone…”
She finished when she ran out of pins. Taking a needle and thread from the pocket of her apron, she quickly stitched up the cut she’d made, patting the heart back into shape as best she could between its new armor of pins. It looked like a horrific surrealist rendering of a hedgehog; almost the kind of thing Zach might have created during his college years at Goldsmiths, when he’d fought his every natural urge to draw and paint, to produce figurative art. He’d wanted to shock, to be avant-garde.
“What’s it for?” he asked tentatively. Dimity looked up, startled, and had clearly forgotten he was there. She chewed on the inside of her mouth for a second, then leaned towards him.
“Keeps the nasties out,” she whispered, and looked past him as though something had caught her eye. Zach glanced over his shoulder. In the hall mirror, his reflection glanced back at him.
“The nasties?”
“The ones you don’t want.” She stood up, then paused and looked down at him. “Good long arms,” she murmured. “Come on and help with it.”
Obediently, Zach rose and followed her into the sitting room. Under Dimity’s direction, he ducked into the inglenook fireplace and stood up cautiously, noting as he did that the morning had taken a strange turn. His shoulders brushed the sooty stone on either side, and when he looked up, a shower of smuts sifted into his eyes. Cursing, he rubbed at them, only to find that his fingers were gritty, too. The sharp stink of ash filled his nostrils, and up above his head the sky was a small, dazzling square. How did I come to be in a chimney? he wondered, with a bemused smile for the dark space around him.
“Feel up above your head-as far as you can. There’s a nail there for it. Can you find it?” Dimity called from the sitting room. Looking down, Zach could see her feet in their ugly leather boots, shuffling anxiously to and fro. He reached up and felt about with his fingers, loosening more soot that pattered down into his hair. He tried to shake it off and kept searching until his fingers brushed against the sharp spike of a rusty nail.
“I’ve got it!”
“Take this then-take it.” Her arm reached into the flue and handed him the heart pincushion, hanging it from his finger with a loop in the thread that she’d stitched it with. “Hang it on the nail, but as you do you have to sing part of the song.”
“What song?” Zach asked, carefully lifting the heart so that it wouldn’t touch him. The flue narrowed at his head height, though, and it brushed against his cheek. A cold touch of metal that left a thin scratch. He shuddered. “What song?” he repeated, rattled.
“Bless this house, keep it whole…” The line was sung in a quavering voice, thin and high.
“Bless this house,” Zach echoed tunelessly. He hung the thing on the nail and a sudden updraft carried his words away like smoke. A rush of air that whispered angrily in his ears. He got out of the inglenook as fast as he could, and stood there brushing pointlessly at his hair and clothes with filthy hands. When he looked up at Dimity, her hands were clasped in front of her mouth, the fingers meshed tightly together, and her eyes were bright. With a quiet, joyous sound she threw her arms around Zach, who could only stand in silent amazement.
When she let go and stepped away, she seemed embarrassed, and looked down at her stained fingers as they fiddled with a loose thread on her apron. It didn’t seem to bother her that her hands were covered in blood. As if she was used to it. Zach rubbed his own filthy palms together again.
“Could I use your bathroom to get cleaned up a bit?” he said. Dimity nodded, still without looking at him, and pointed out to the hallway.
“Through the door to the back,” she said quietly. Zach went out past the stairs and pulled open the door, which was swollen and stiff. He had a sudden idea of the wooden skeleton of the house being bloated with damp and brittle with age. Experimentally, he gouged his thumbnail into one of the thick beams wriggling through the wall. It was as hard as iron.