“How nice? As nice as having somebody brush your hair for you?”
“I don’t know,” said Dimity, at a loss. “Nobody’s ever brushed my hair but me.”
“I can plait with five strands, you know, not just three,” said Élodie, who was passing near the older girls.
“It’s true, she can. Élodie’s very good at hairdos,” said Delphine.
“I’ll do yours for you later,” said Élodie. She paused, apparently as surprised as Dimity by this sudden show of generosity. “If you want.” She shrugged.
“I’d like that. Thank you,” said Dimity. Élodie glanced up at her and smiled. A flash of her small, white teeth, as pretty and rare as wood anemones.
Later that week, Charles took Dimity out in the car, just as he’d promised to. The Austin Ten tore out of the driveway away from Littlecombe at such a speed that Dimity grabbed the door handle with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other. The inside of the car was ripe with the smell of oil and warm leather, a heady smell so thick she could almost taste it. The seat itself was hot enough to radiate through her skirt, heating the backs of her legs until sweat began to prickle there.
“And you’ve really never been in a car before?” Charles asked, winding down his window and gesturing for her to do the same.
“Only the bus, once or twice, and sometimes a tractor trailer to go potato picking, or cobbing before the harvest,” she said, suddenly apprehensive. Charles laughed.
“A tractor trailer? I really don’t think that counts. Well, hang on tight. We’ll go up to the Wareham road so I can really open her up.”
Dimity could hardly hear him above the thunder of air through the open windows and the roar of the engine on top of that. As they swerved along the lane between rows of Blacknowle’s cottages, she saw Wilf and some of the village lads lingering by the shop. She put her chin up haughtily as the car sped past, and was pleased to see them watch, agog, as the sunshine glanced from the blue paintwork, and the wind caught at tendrils of her hair. Wilf raised his fingers, surreptitiously, but though Dimity caught his eye for a second, she deliberately looked away.
“Friends of yours?” Charles asked.
“Not as such, no,” Dimity said. Charles treated them to several loud blasts of the horn and then glanced at her, merrily, and Dimity laughed-could not help herself; it bubbled up inside her like something boiling over, mixing with her nerves and bursting out, irrepressibly.
At the top road Charles turned left towards Dorchester, and with a lurch of the gears they were away, gaining speed until Dimity thought they couldn’t get any faster. The sides of the road were a rich green blur, the landscape seemed turned to liquid, flowing by. Only the sky and the far pale sea were unchanged and Dimity gazed out at them as they roared along, swerving out around a sluggish bus and other, slower cars. The air through the window was warm but still cooling compared to the heat of the day, and she put her hands up to her hair, twisting it into a knot and holding it so that the back of her neck would dry. From the corner of her eye she saw Charles look at her, keenly, dividing his attention between her and the road.
“Mitzy, don’t move,” he said, but the words were almost lost in the din.
“Beg pardon?” she shouted back.
“Never mind. Nowhere to stop just here, anyway. Will you do that for me later-twist your hair up like that? Exactly like that? Can you remember how you did it?” he said.
“Of course I can.”
“Good girl.” Valentina appeared in Dimity’s mind, and she chewed her lip as she thought about her, and how to phrase what she felt she must. Word of the Aubreys’ return had carried to The Watch on the grubby tide of its visitors, like the driftwood and trash that swept along on the channel currents. Dimity could not keep it a secret.
“My mother will say…” she began, but Charles cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“Don’t worry. There’ll be money to keep Valentina Hatcher on our side,” he said, and Dimity relaxed, relieved not to have to ask.
When they got to Dorchester they made a quick circuit of the town before taking the same road back in an easterly direction, every bit as rapidly as before. Dimity held her fingers in the streaming wind, playing with the feel of it, letting it force her hand back on her wrist, then holding it steady, flat; then letting it flex her fingers into a fist.
“I understand it now,” she said, almost to herself.
“What do you understand?” Charles asked, leaning closer to hear her better.
“How a bird flies. And why they do love it so,” she said, never taking her eyes from her hand as it cut through the rushing air. She could feel the artist watching her, and she let him, not challenging his gaze by returning it. She stared at her hand as it flew, her fingertips glowing in the sunlight; she breathed in the fiery smell of the car and felt the rumble of the world going by, and to her it seemed a wholly new place, a place of a scale and wonder that she hadn’t known before. A place where she might fly.
Charles had in mind a painting of the soul of English folklore. He told them this over lunch one day, as Dimity filled her mouth with chunks of cheese and pickles, piled onto slices of tough bread that Delphine had made herself. It was chewy, but she had put fresh rosemary into the dough, as Dimity had suggested, so the flavor was as delicious as the aroma.
“I painted a Gypsy wedding in France. It was one of the best things I have done,” the artist said, without pride or modesty. “Somehow you could taste the earthiness, the connection between those people and the land they lived on. Their gaze-I mean their inner gaze-was on the here, the now. They could feel their roots reaching down into the ground, and back through the years, even though some of them had no idea who their fathers had been, or their fathers’ fathers. Never looking too far ahead, never looking too far afield. That is the key to happiness. Realizing where you are, and what you have right now, and being grateful for it.”
He paused to take another mouthful of bread. Celeste took a steady breath, and smiled slightly when he looked up. Dimity got the impression that she might have heard the speech before. When she looked at his daughters, they both wore glazed, faraway expressions. Either they had heard it before as well, or they weren’t bothering to listen. The speech was all for her, she realized. “Take Dimity here,” he said, and her own name made her jump. “She has been born and raised here. This is her land and these are her people, and I’m sure she would never think to leave. Would never assume the grass was greener elsewhere. Would you, Mitzy?” His eyes were on her and their gaze was steady, compelling. Dimity started to nod her head, then understood he wanted a negative reply, so shook it instead. Charles tapped a finger on the tabletop to show his approval, and Dimity smiled. But Celeste gave her an appraising look.
“It is easy to see things as they appear to be, and to make guesses, and form opinions. Who is to say that they are correct? Who is to say the happiness of the Gypsies wasn’t in your own mind, and then in your hand as you painted them?” she said to Charles, with a challenging tilt of her chin.
“It was real. I only painted what was there, in front of me…” Charles was adamant, but Celeste interrupted him.
“What you saw in front of you. What you thought you saw. Always, there are questions of…” She waved her hand, searching for the right word. “Perception.” Charles and Celeste locked eyes, and Dimity saw something pass between them, something she couldn’t decipher. A muscle twitched in the corner of Charles’s jaw, and there was a tense, angry look on Celeste’s face.
“Don’t start that again,” he said, with stony calm. “I told you it was nothing. You’re imagining things.” The silence at the table grew strained, and when Celeste spoke again her voice was far harder than her words.