Through the door was a tiny utility area, the back door of the cottage, and the door to the bathroom. The ceiling was close enough to brush Zach’s hair, sloping away from the back wall of the house. The temperature dropped noticeably, and Zach realized that the bathroom had just been tacked on hastily-a flimsy lean-to, no doubt thrown together to replace an old garden privy. He peered out through the glass in the outer door. The backyard was shaded and bare of plants. Just trampled, mossy earth and cracked paving slabs slimed with green algae. A variety of old sheds and outbuildings stood here and there, with their doors shut tight, secretive. One of them was indeed a chicken coop, where six brown hens were pecking and preening. Beyond the yard the trees that marked the edge of the ravine heaved their branches in the wind. Zach scrubbed his hands as best he could in the tiny bathroom basin, and tried to forget the way the updraft in the chimney had sounded, for a second, like a voice.
Dimity was making tea, humming contentedly as she set out cups and saucers. No chipped mugs this time, Zach noted. He had come up in the world. She ushered him through to sit in the living room, as pleased and adamant as a child playing house. In the end, the cup she passed him had no handle, but she obviously hadn’t noticed, so he didn’t mention it. A smile hovered around her mouth, waxing and waning as hidden thoughts came and went. Now seemed to be as good a time as any for a confession, Zach thought.
“Miss Hatcher-”
“Oh, do call me Dimity. I can’t be doing with all the Miss Hatcher this and Miss Hatcher that!” she said gaily.
“Dimity,” he said. “I, uh, I met your neighbor, Hannah Brock. She seems nice.”
“Nice, yes. Hannah’s a good girl. A good neighbor. I’ve known her since she was a baby, you know. That family… that family have always been good folk. Keep themselves to themselves, mind. Been at Southern Farm a full century, the Brocks have, as far as I know. How frightened she is of losing it! Poor girl. Always working so hard, and getting nothing back for it. Almost like a curse on the place but that can’t be right. No, I can’t think who’d have done that…” She trailed off, staring into the distance and seeming to consider who might have set a curse on the farm.
“I think I met her… husband, too. I went down to buy some eggs yesterday. A dark-haired man?”
“Her husband? Oh, no. Couldn’t have been. Her husband’s dead. Dead and gone to the bottom of the sea.” She shook her head sadly. “So many of them down there. My own father, too.”
“He drowned? She’s a widow?” Zach asked.
“A widow, yes. These past seven years or so. Drowned, gone, lost at sea. I never liked him, mind you. He was too clever for his own good. Thought he was, anyway. No understanding of the land. But honest and of good heart for all that, I suppose.” She looked around the room quickly, as if expecting the man’s vengeful ghost to have heard her malign him. Zach tried to shape Hannah into the role of widow in his head. It was a poor fit. Widows were old and tearful, or else brassy and rich.
“I was married, you know. We got a divorce. Well, in truth, she left me. Ali. I have a daughter, called Elise. She’s six now. Would you like to see a picture?” Dimity gave a vague nod, looking puzzled, so Zach persevered and handed her the picture from his wallet. Elise grinning, holding a cloud of cotton candy bigger than her head. She’d been so excited she couldn’t keep a straight face. Then afterwards the sugar gave her a headache, and she was vile to everyone and ruined the day. But in the picture her eyes were bright and her hair was shiny, and she radiated the simple joy of being in possession of something wonderful to eat.
“Is she happy, your little girl? Is her mother kind to her?” asked Dimity, and Zach was shocked to see that her face had fallen into lines of sadness, and her voice had grown hoarse.
“Yes, Ali’s always been great with her. She adores Elise.”
“And you?”
“I adore her too. She’s a very adorable girl. I try to be a good dad, but I suppose that’s something that time will tell.”
“Why did your wife leave you?”
“She fell out of love with me. I guess that happened first; and then, after that she could suddenly see all the many ways in which I was lacking.”
“You don’t seem that bad to me.”
“Ali has… high standards, I suppose. Now she’s met somebody who matches up to them better than I ever could.” Zach smiled briefly. “It’s funny-you know what people say about first impressions? I think that’s what our problem was. Mine and Ali’s. We met at an exhibition of twentieth-century drawings-an exhibition that I had curated. I was able to tell her at great length what made each piece so great; what made the artists so great. I suppose I came across as deeply insightful, passionate… high-minded, successful, and going places. I think it was all downhill from there, as far as Ali was concerned.”
Dimity seemed to consider this for a while.
“People’s hearts… other people’s hearts seem to fill with love and empty again, like the tide filling the bay. I’ve never understood it. Mine has never changed. It filled, and it stayed full. Stays full even now… even now,” she said fiercely.
“Well, mine did too, for a long time after she left. It felt like the world was ending.” Zach smiled sadly. “Suddenly there didn’t seem a lot of point to anything I did, or was trying to do. You know?”
“Yes. Yes I do.” Dimity nodded intently. Zach shrugged.
“But gradually, it’s… faded, I suppose. There’s only so long you can spend wishing things were different. Wishing you were different. Then you have to move on.”
“And have you now?”
“Moved on? I’m not sure. I’m trying to, but it’s easier said than done, I suppose. But that’s kind of why I’m here… in Blacknowle. I’ve been meaning to tell you, actually-I’m writing a book, about Charles Aubrey.” Dimity looked up when he said this, her eyes widening fearfully. “I don’t… I won’t put anything in it that you don’t want me to, I promise. I just want to write the truth about him…”
“The truth? The truth? What do you mean?” Dimity struggled out of her chair and stood in front of him, shifting her weight. She suddenly looked very afraid.
“No-please. Look. I don’t want to intrude on your memories of him. Really. And even if we talk and you tell me things you remember, but you don’t want me to write them down or record them, I won’t, I promise,” he said intently.
“What’s the use of it, then? What do you want from me?” she said.
Zach considered his answer carefully. “I just… I just want to know him. Nobody really seems to know him. Only the public figure, the things everybody saw. But you knew him, Dimity. Knew and loved him. Even if I don’t write down anything specific that you tell me, you can still help me to get to know him. Please. You can tell me about the Charles you knew.” In the pause after he spoke, Dimity twisted the ends of her hair and then sat down again.
“I knew him better than anybody,” she said at last.
“Yes,” Zach said, relieved.
“Can I see that picture? The one you held up to the window before?” She colored up as though she’d been in the wrong on that occasion, ignoring him while he behaved so rudely outside. Zach grinned.
“I’m sorry about that. I was so keen to speak to you I forgot my manners. Here it is. It belongs to a collector who lives up in Newcastle, but he loaned it to a gallery for this exhibition.” He dug out the magazine and passed it to her. She stared at it intently, ran her fingers over the glossy paper, and sighed slightly.
“Delphine,” she whispered.
“You remember her?” Zach asked, and Dimity shot him a withering glance. “Right, sorry.”
“She was such a lovely girl. She was my first friend. First proper friend, that is. They were such town mice, when they first arrived! Not used to getting her shoes muddy. But she changed. She wanted to be a bit like me, I suppose-a bit wild. She wanted to learn how to cook and how to gather from the hedgerows. And I suppose I wanted to be more like her-she was so friendly, so easy to talk to. So much loved by her family. And she knew so much! I thought her the wisest person I knew. Even later, when she went up off to boarding school, and she got more interested in fashion and boys, and going to the flicks… she was still my good friend. She wrote to me sometimes, during the winters when they weren’t here. Told me all about this teacher or that boy, or this row she’d had with some other girl… I did miss her, afterwards. I did miss her.”