“I never thought Charles Aubrey would be bothered about what people said about him. He never seemed to mind much the rest of the time. About society, and convention, I mean.” At this Dimity frowned, and looked down at her fingertips, the split wisps of her hair. Zach saw her draw in a long breath, as if to steady herself.
“No. He was a free man, truly. Guided only by his heart.”
“And yet… I’ve always been bewildered by his decision to go off to the war,” said Zach. “He was an ideological pacifist, after all, and he still had responsibilities. People who needed him-like you, and Delphine… Do you know why he went? Did he ever explain it to you?”
Dimity appeared unsure how to answer him, and though it seemed for a while that she would, in the end the silence stretched and her face grew anxious, suffused with all the mute desperation of a child at the front of the class who has been told she may not sit until the equation is solved.
“He went off to war because…” Tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes. Shocked, Zach stayed silent. “I don’t know why! I’ve never known. I’d have done anything to keep him here with me, anything he asked. And everything I did, I did for him. Everything. Even… even…” She shook her head. “But he was in London when he went, when he joined the army. He went from London, not from here, so I didn’t get a chance to stop him. And… I never told her!”
“Never told who, Dimity?”
“Delphine! I never told her that… that it wasn’t her fault!”
“That what wasn’t her fault? Dimity, I don’t understand… it was Delphine’s fault that he went to war?”
“No! No, it was…” She broke off, tears making the words thick and unintelligible. Zach reached over to her and took her hands.
“Dimity, I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to upset you, really. Please, forgive me.” He squeezed her hands to distract her, but she kept her face turned to the floor, with tears running down the creases in her skin to gather along her jaw. She rocked herself a little, back and forth, and made a quiet keening sound, a sound of such profound sadness that Zach could hardly stand it. “Please don’t cry, Dimity. Please don’t. I’m sorry. Listen, I don’t understand what you’re telling me about Delphine, and about the war. Can you explain it to me?” Gradually, Dimity’s sobbing eased, and she fell still.
“No,” she croaked then. “No more talking. I… can’t. I can’t talk about him dying. And I can’t talk about… about Delphine.” She turned her face to him, and it was raw with emotion. Not just grief, he suddenly saw. He blinked, startled. There was far more there than simple sorrow. It looked for all the world like guilt. “Please go now. I can’t talk any more.”
“All right, I’ll go. And we won’t talk about the war any more. I promise,” said Zach, even though he knew then, he was sure, that Dimity knew far more about what had happened that last summer of Charles Aubrey’s life than she was prepared to tell him. “I’ll go, if you’re sure you’ll be all right? Next time I won’t ask you anything. I’ll answer your questions instead, how about that? You can ask me anything you like about me or my family, and I’ll do my best to answer. Deal?” Wiping at her face, Dimity looked up at him, bewildered but growing calmer. In the end she nodded, and Zach squeezed her hands again before he left, bending to put a kiss on her damp cheek.
Outside, the day was blowy and carried the dusty perfume of gorse flowers. Zach took a deep breath and let it out slowly, only then realizing how tense he had been, how much Dimity’s tears had worried him. He rubbed one hand over his face and shook his head. He had to tread more carefully, be more sensitive; not go blundering in with his questions when it was her life and loss he was asking about, not just some figure from history he had never even met, even if that figure’s blood was running in his veins. He wondered whether he might safely raise the subject of Dennis again-who the young man was, and where the collection that his portraits had come from might be. Zach glanced at his watch and was surprised by how late it was. He had a date with Hannah, and set off towards the beach below Southern Farm to meet her.
Hannah was already on the shore when Zach got there, standing barefoot in the shallows with the hems of her jeans rolled up. She turned and smiled as he approached, folding her arms for warmth.
“I was going to swim, but I can’t decide if I fancy it or not. But now you’re here you can keep me company,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s not that warm today, is it?”
“That only makes the sea seem warmer. Trust me.”
“I haven’t got a towel.”
“Diddums.” She gave him a look, appraising and expectant, and Zach had the sudden feeling that he was being tested.
“All right then. I’ve been up at The Watch for the past few hours. I could do with washing that place off my skin.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“Nothing specific. It’s just… there seem to be so many pent-up memories there. And not all of them that happy.” He thought of the way sorrow sometimes seemed to sit, stony and cold, in every corner. “Talking to Dimity can be a bit intense.”
“Yes. I suppose it can,” Hannah agreed.
They turned and walked side by side along the shoreline for a while.
“So how are you finding our little corner of Dorset? Not missing the bright lights of Bath?” Hannah asked, flicking stray curls of her hair out of her face where the breeze was playing with it.
“I like it. It’s kind of restful, being surrounded by landscape rather than people.”
“Oh? I had you down as more of a culture vulture than that.” She glanced across at him briefly, and he smiled.
“I am. But as soon as I left London I was stepping back from that way of life, I suppose. London feels like it’s… in my past, now. I studied there; I got married there. I wouldn’t want to live there again. Not after everything that’s happened since. Do you ever feel that? Not wanting to go back to significant places?”
“Not really. All my significant places are here.”
“I suppose that is a bit different. And you never wanted to leave at all-leave where you grew up and try something completely different, somewhere else?”
“No.” She paused. “I know that might not be very fashionable; might not seem very adventurous. But some of us are born with strong roots. And wherever you go, you’re still you, after all. Nobody ever really starts a new life, or anything like that. You take the old one with you. How can you not?”
“And yet I find myself constantly trying. To start over.”
“And has it ever worked? Have you ever found yourself to be any different?”
“No, I suppose not.” He smiled ruefully. “Perhaps you’re just more content with who you are than the rest of us.”
“Or just more resigned to it,” she said, also smiling.
“Still, your roots must be pretty strong, if you didn’t even think of leaving when… when you lost your husband. When you lost Toby.”
Hannah was silent for a while after he said this, and she turned her head to gaze out to sea.
“Toby wasn’t from Blacknowle. He blew into my life for eight great years… and then he blew out again. The farm, and the house, were the only things that kept me anchored when he died. If I’d left then… I’d have lost myself as well,” she said. They had reached the far corner of the beach, and Hannah stopped. She took a deep breath and then pulled her shirt over her head in one clean movement. Zach looked away, tactfully, but not before he’d noticed a scattering of pale freckles descending the bony line between her breasts. “So, are you swimming fully clothed, or what?” She turned to face him in her bikini, hands on hips. Zach felt curiously voyeuristic-strange for it to be acceptable for him to see her like this, outside, when it would be invasive to look at her in her underwear, indoors. He pulled off his top and dropped his jeans. Hannah let a measuring gaze rise from his white feet to the spread of his shoulders; so bold and overt that he almost blushed. “Last one in’s a rotten egg.” She smiled fleetingly, turned, and made her way nimbly across the pebbles to the water. Three strides took her knee-deep; then she lunged forwards, dipped her head beneath the swell of a wave, and started swimming.