“Oh,” she began, then had to pause, clear her throat. “She was pleased, of course. She was quite a cultural woman, my mother. And free-spirited. She didn’t hold with all the whispers about Charles and his family, passing round the village. She was happy to have such a famous artist draw her daughter.”
“I see. She sounds like a very liberal woman…”
“Well, when you’re something of an outcast yourself, you’re drawn to others in the same boat. That’s how it was with her.”
“Yes, I see. Tell me, did Charles ever give you any of his drawings of you? Or of anything? As a present, or to say thank you for posing for him?”
“Posing for him? Oh no, I hardly ever posed. He didn’t want drawings like that, not normally. He was always just watching and waiting, and when everything seemed right to him, he would start. Sometimes I wasn’t even aware of it. Sometimes I was. He would ask me to stop, sometimes.” Mitzy, don’t move. Stay exactly as you are.
Once, when she had been stretching, standing up to look at the sunset after hours of shelling peas. She had been thinking of going home, and how much she didn’t want to. After being at Littlecombe, with all the company and the laughter and the clean smells, The Watch seemed dark and damp and unwelcoming. Her own home. Don’t move, Mitzy. So she’d stood for over half an hour with her arms on her head, crossed over her hair, the blood running out of them until at first they tingled, then went numb, and by the end felt like they were made of stone, and no longer belonged to her. But she didn’t move a muscle until his pencil went quiet. This always marked the end-for a while his hand kept moving, making sweeping gestures over the page, but the pencil no longer touched-it simply moved, like a third eye, inspecting. Then at last his hand stopped, too, and he frowned, and it was done; and Dimity felt that cold, tumbling feeling inside each time-the feeling of something wonderful ceasing, and the longing for it to resume. She’d had no inkling then, of what was to come. She hadn’t seen the darkness gathering; hadn’t been prepared for the violence that lay in wait.
CHAPTER FOUR
Zach sat in front of his laptop, surrounded by notes and papers and catalogs, and suddenly realized, almost twenty-four hours later, how neatly Dimity Hatcher had sidestepped his question about Aubrey ever giving her pictures as presents. He was intrigued by her reaction to the picture of Dennis he’d shown her-the way she’d blushed and seemed reluctant to look too long. He opened two magazines and the recent Christie’s catalog to the pages of the Dennis pictures, and set them side by side. He was sitting at a dark, sticky table in the snug of the Spout Lantern, and he’d had two pints of bitter with lunch, which had been a mistake. His head now felt warm and slightly slow. Outside, the sun was a smear of gold over the dusty window glass. He’d been hoping that the alcohol would ease his thoughts; let him make abstract leaps through the stodge of all his notes and come up with a new plan, a plan of brilliant clarity. Instead, his thoughts kept returning to his dad and his grandpa, and the way the silences between them had sometimes seemed to grow to fill the whole room, the whole house. Grow so heavy and tangible that Zach would squirm and twist and find it impossible to sit still, until finally he would be sent to his room or into the garden. He remembered the way his grandpa would criticize all the time, and find fault, and how crestfallen his dad would look with each remark. A bit of car maintenance gone awry, the incorrect decanting of wine, a critical school report for Zach. Zach couldn’t count the number of times he caught his mum glaring blackly at his father. Why don’t you ever stand up to him? Then his father would be the one to twist and fidget in discomfort.
“Pete’s sent me over because your long face is putting off the punters.” Hannah Brock was standing by his table with a pint in her hand and a nonchalant air. Surprised, Zach sat up straighter, and was momentarily lost for words. Hannah took a swig from her pint and gestured at the piles of paper and files surrounding him. “What is all this? Your book?” She tapped the nearest catalog with her fingertips, and Zach noticed a bold stripe of dirt under each of her nails.
“One day it will be. Maybe. If I can ever get my head around it all.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Not at all.”
“There are plenty of books about Charles Aubrey already, aren’t there? Can’t you just copy one of them?” She gave a wolfish sort of grin.
“Oh, I’ve done all that. When I started this thing years ago, I read them all, then all his letters, then I went to all the places where he’d been-born, grew up, educated, lived, worked, et cetera, et cetera. And after I did all that I realized that my book… my book, which was going to be all new and essential and visceral…”
“Was exactly the same as all the other books?”
“Precisely.”
“So what’s brought you here now, to finish it?” she asked.
“It seemed to be the best place,” he said. He looked at her, curious. “You’re very interested all of a sudden, for somebody who didn’t even want to give me the time of day before.” Hannah smiled and drank again. She was already halfway down her pint.
“Well, I’ve decided you can’t be all bad. Dimity’s a pretty good judge of these things, and you’ve managed to talk your way in there. Perhaps I was a little…”
“Hostile and rude?” He smiled.
“Suspicious, before. But, you know, a lot of people come and go from here. People on holiday, people with weekend homes or summer homes. People with Aubrey fixations.” She flicked her eyes at Zach. “It’s hard on the people who live here. You invest time and energy getting to know people, welcoming them, then off they go again. After a while, you stop bothering.”
“Dimity told me that your family had lived here for generations.”
“That’s right. My great-grandparents bought the farm at the turn of the last century,” said Hannah. “So, what else did she tell you about me?” Zach hesitated before answering.
“That… you lost your husband, some time ago.” He glanced up but her face was calm, unruffled. “And that you’re working really, really hard to keep the farm going.”
“Well, that’s true enough, God only knows.”
“But not today?” He smiled again, as she drained her glass.
“Well, some days the sheep are all out eating grass without a care in the world, the to-do list is as long as your arm and the coffers are full of cobwebs, and there really is nothing else you can do but get pissed at lunchtime.” She stood up and nodded at his pint, barely a third empty. “Another?”
While she was at the bar, Zach stared at the pictures of Dennis again, and wondered at her change in demeanor. Possibly it was as innocent a reversal as she’d explained-he hoped so. Dennis. Three young men, all similar, all sweet, all with an air of goodness and innocence that was childlike, as though the artist had been keen to prove that here was a person who had never had a base thought in all his life. Never bullied anyone, or taken advantage of another person’s weakness. Never acted selfish or deceitful in pursuit of lust or envy or financial gain. But he just could not get away from the notion that there was something wrong with them. Each face was minutely, subtly different; either physically or emotionally. As if they were three different young men, not the same one. Either three different young men, drawn by Aubrey and all called Dennis; or else the same young man drawn three times, by somebody other than Aubrey. Neither option made much sense. He ran his hands through his hair in confusion and wondered if he was cracking up. Nobody else seemed to have any doubts about their authenticity.