“A lovely thing, Dimity. And very grown-up,” she said. Dimity smiled and thanked her repeatedly until she was told to stop. They rode back on the bus in time for tea, and Dimity watched Celeste covertly, as the Moroccan woman chatted to her daughters, thinking how beautiful she was, and how kind, and how she had called Dimity one of her girls. She realized with new clarity just how different life could have been if she’d been born to a mother more like Celeste and less like Valentina Hatcher.
Days later, when Charles was back from London, Dimity walked to Littlecombe through the village with her head held high; past the scattered men with their glasses of beer, sitting along wooden benches outside the pub. She ignored their hisses, cocked a scathing eyebrow at them, and approached the house boldly along the driveway. Raised voices stopped her. Celeste’s first, so she thought it was probably Élodie being shouted at, but then Charles’s voice joined in. The sound made her uneasy. She walked nearer, slowly, tucking herself close to the side of the house, in the shelter of the porch, to hear their words better.
“Celeste, calm down, for God’s sake!” said Charles, and anger pulled the words tight.
“I will not! Must this happen every time you go to London? Every time, Charles? If it is so then tell me now, for I will not sit here in the middle of nowhere while you do that. I won’t!”
“How many times must I say it? I drew her. Nothing more.”
“Oh, so reasonable, you sound! Then why do I not believe you? Why do I think you are lying? Who is she, this pale-headed creature? The daughter of your patron? Some whore you found, to replace the whore you found in Maroc?”
“Enough! I have done nothing wrong and I will not be spoken to this way! It will not do, Celeste!”
“You promised me!”
“And I kept my word!”
“The word of a man. Long years have taught women what such a thing is worth.”
“I am not any man, Celeste. I am your man.”
“Mine when you are here, but when you are not?”
“What do you suggest? That I never leave your side? That I consult with you on my every movement, my every action?”
“If your action is to fuck this girl, then yes, I do suggest this!”
“I told you, she was not my lover! That is Constance Mory, the wife of a man I met at the gallery. She has an unusual bone structure… I wanted to draw her, that was all. Please, you must not pounce every time I draw a female face. It does not mean betrayal.”
“Not always, perhaps. But I have only my experience to learn from,” said Celeste hoarsely.
“What’s past is past, chérie. I’ve drawn Mitzy Hatcher dozens of times, and you don’t suspect anything there, do you?”
“Oh, Mitzy is a child! Even you would not stoop so low. But that is how you love a woman, Charles. This much I know. That is how you love a woman-you draw her face.” Dimity’s heart gave a squeeze, and something hot surged into her blood. It rushed to the tips of her fingers and made them shake. That is how you love a woman-you draw her face. She could not count the number of times Charles Aubrey had drawn her face. Many, many times. Her pulse made her muscles twitch, and she shifted her feet as quietly as she could.
“I love only you, Celeste. My heart is full of it,” said Charles.
“But my face is not in your drawings anymore. Not for many months.” Celeste sounded sad as she said this. “You are so accustomed to me that you do not even see me anymore. That is the truth. So you leave me here by myself, bored and forgotten about, while you go off and have your fun. This place feels like exile when you go, Charles! Don’t you see that?”
“You’re not alone, Celeste. You have the girls… and I thought you hated London in the summertime?”
“I hate being left behind more, Charles! I hate waiting while you see other women, while you draw other women…”
“I told you, it’s-” Charles broke off at a loud crunching sound, and Dimity looked down in horror, at the crushed fragment of clay pot beneath her shoe. She had no chance to run or hide, so she dithered, hung her head. “Mitzy!” Charles’s face appeared around the side of the porch. “Is everything all right?” Dimity nodded dumbly, her cheeks blazing red. “Delphine and Élodie are down by the stream,” he said. She nodded again, and turned away quickly, not to find the girls but to flee.
Late in August the sea mist came in like a wave grown massive, swelling over the cliffs and rolling almost half a mile inland. The droplets of water were almost visible, almost big enough to fall as rain, but not quite. It was rare in summer but not unheard of, and for the first two days, Élodie and Delphine loved it. They threw blankets around their shoulders and played at highwaymen, or murder in the dark; murder in the mist, as it was renamed. The three of them ran around the garden and the spread of pasture along the cliffs, looming up behind each other suddenly, squealing with delighted fear. Élodie asked Dimity for ghost stories, and listened wide-eyed to her tale of a whole army of drowned Viking warriors who left Wareham to attack the Saxons in Exeter, only for their ships to be wrecked by a storm in Swanage Bay. Every year for nigh on a thousand years, they’ve roamed the beach and cliffs on the anniversary of their deaths, coughing up water and weed, looking for their horses and their sunken treasure, and for people to slice open with their swords! Élodie was entranced, and gripped Dimity’s skirt with tight little fists, her mouth hanging open in fascinated horror. The moisture made their hair hang limp, and words fell from their lips like pebbles, carrying no distance at all. The mist was like a cloak itself, turning the world mysterious and hidden, but by the third day all these things were wearing on them.
Élodie’s temper grew sullen, and Delphine’s quiet and preoccupied. The two girls spent more and more time inside with the wireless radio chattering to them; Delphine on the couch reading a novel or Lady’s Companion magazine, Élodie drawing at the table, frowning in concentration and angrily discarding one failed sketch after another. When Dimity knocked at the door, Celeste ushered her in as if relieved to see her, her expression tense and impatient, as though she was being made to wait too long for something important.
“How long will it last, this… brouillard? How do you say it?” she asked.
“The fog?”
“Yes. The fog. I am not sure how you people stand it, without running mad. It’s like death, don’t you think? Like being dead.” Her voice was hushed, intense.
“It shouldn’t be much longer, Mrs. Aubrey. It ought not to have stayed this long already. Only in winter, normally, would it linger for a week.” Celeste smiled briefly.
“Mrs. Aubrey? Oh child, you know I am not that. I am Celeste, that is all.” She waved a hand in agitation. “And still he goes out to paint! What does he hope to paint? White upon white?” she muttered. She crossed to the window and stood looking out with her arms folded. “It is so dull,” she said, to nobody in particular.
The air inside the house was stale and overused, and Dimity thought it small wonder that the girls looked groggy and tired. She thought about trying to persuade them to come out for some air, but then Celeste went to the table and reached up to a high shelf above it, fetching down an atlas. “Come, Dimity, let me tell you about somewhere more alive. Had you heard of Morocco, before you met me?” she said.
“No, I had not,” Dimity confessed. She did not mind saying such things to Celeste. The woman had no scorn in her, made no judgments about Dimity’s education. She peered down at the complex drawing on the page. It made no sense to her at all. She searched for the familiar mouse-like shape of Britain, which she remembered from school; only once she’d found it could she gather where in the world this country of Celeste’s birth might lie. She looked sideways at the woman. It seemed unreal to her, that a person might come from so far away and to Blacknowle.