So, after wandering through the splendid arcades and elegant crescents of the prettiest of Georgian towns, and after duly copying the letters, I did a little shopping. Maybe more than a little. Once I’d found the dress—a short-sleeved blue silk one, with a dainty floral print—I had to find the shoes to go with it, and then came all the bits in between, and by the time I was finished, I had squeezed my supply of personal cash dry. Why I didn’t ask Bill for an advance was a question I avoided like the plague.
I tiptoed upstairs to stash my new clothes in the master bedroom, then floated innocently back down to the study, photocopies in hand. When Willis, Sr., called, late in the afternoon on the fourth day of our hiatus, I greeted him with the self-assurance of someone who knows that all the bases are covered.
“What’s it to be this time, Mr. Willis? Do you want to know about Aunt Dimity’s adventures at Harrod’s? Or maybe we’ll stick closer to home—Aunt Dimity setting aside a patch of garden for the rabbits.”
“I am heartened to hear the enthusiasm in your voice, Miss Shepherd,” said Willis, Sr. “It is reassuring to know that Miss Westwood’s wishes are being carried forward with such zeal. My question, however, has to do with Aunt Dimity’s experiences at the zoological gardens. Can you recount for me the original version of that story?”
“Aunt Dimity Goes to the Zoo,” I murmured, leafing patiently through the photocopies. “Let’s see. That should be here somewhere….” But it wasn’t. I double-checked Bill’s index, but the end result was the same: there had been no reference to the zoo in any of Dimity’s letters. Reluctantly, I admitted as much to Willis, Sr. “I don’t know what to say. There doesn’t seem to be an original version of that story.”
“Precisely, Miss Shepherd. Thank you very much. Have you had an opportunity to look about you yet? Though your work comes first, of course.”
“As a matter of fact, we’ve been having some pretty wet weather since we arrived,” I said. “It’s cleared up a bit today, though, and I think I may get a chance tomorrow to use the map you gave me.”
“I envy you, Miss Shepherd. England in the springtime is not a thing to miss. I would suggest a longer outing, but, alas, the work needs must be done.” And with a pleasant goodbye, he hung up.
I put the receiver back in the cradle, then turned to Bill, who was still laboring over his list of names. “Why didn’t Dimity write to my mother about the zoo?” I asked. “She talks about Berkeley Square and that rabbit-faced lieutenant, but in all her wartime chatter there’s not one word about the zoo.”
“Another uncomfortable memory?” he suggested. “Your mother did find her there, wandering about in a daze.”
“As though whatever happened had happened recently,” I said. “And Dimity went there… why?”
“Because she’d been happy there? Because it reminded her of better days?”
“What a shock it must have been to find it deserted, boarded up…. Yet she used it as the setting for one of her most cheerful stories.” I riffled through the manuscript. “You know, Bill—Dimity said she wrote these for me and for my mother. I’m beginning to wonder if she wrote them for herself as well.”
* * *
I rose early the next day, showered, then put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, heavy socks, and my hiking boots. I tied the arms of a sweater around my waist, in case the sun decided to hide its face again, and tucked the topographic map and the photograph in my back pocket. After a light breakfast, I was ready to face the great outdoors.
Bill, on the other hand, didn’t look ready for anything more strenuous than a stroll across a putting green. He met me at nine o’clock in the solarium dressed in his usual tweed sport-coat, button-down oxford shirt, and corduroy trousers. The only thing out of the ordinary was the absence of a tie.
“Don’t you have any other clothes?” I asked.
“You sound like my father,” he said, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.
“You should listen to your father. But I’m not talking about matters of taste at the moment. I’m talking about survival.” I looked doubtfully at his smooth-soled leather shoes. “Even a pair of sneakers would have better traction than those, and I think you’re going to swelter in that jacket. Didn’t you ever climb any hills when you were in Africa?”
“I had a Land Rover,” Bill replied evenly. “Besides, Emma said there was a path.”
“A rough path, in a roughly vertical direction.” I poked the bulging canvas bag he’d slung over one shoulder. “What’s in there?”
“A few necessities. Let’s see….” He opened the bag and rummaged through it. “A bottle of water, a loaf of bread, some cheese, a few bars of chocolate, the emergency lantern from the car, a throw rug, a trowel from the utility room, a camera—”
“We’re not going on safari,” I protested. “Trust me on this, Bill—that bag is going to weigh a ton before we get to the top. You’re going to wish you’d left some of that stuff behind.”
“You let me worry about that.” Throwing open the solarium door, he strode out into the garden. “What a glorious day!”
He was right about that much, at least. It felt so good to be outside that I had to restrain myself from taking off at a run. A sheep meadow stretched green and serene to the west, the oak grove stood to the east, and ahead of us rose Pouter’s Hill.
We crossed the sunken terrace of the back garden, then went up the stairs and through the gate in the gray stone wall and out into a grassy meadow. A graveled path led us between the pair of redbuds I had seen from the deck, to a willow-shaded brook that ran along the foot of the hill. The rustic bridge that spanned it practically pointed to an opening in the trees. We consulted the map, decided it was the path Emma had pointed out, and started up. I fell silent, saving my breath for the climb, but Bill spent enough for both of us.
“Birdsong, bluebells, and bracken,” he rhapsodized. “Soft breezes to speed us on our way. Good, honest sweat, the heady scent of spring, and a winding path beneath our feet.” He paused to take off his sportcoat and mop his brow. “Ah, Lori, it’s wonderful to be alive.”
“Right,” I said, and kept on walking. As the good, honest sweat began cascading down Bill’s face, his lyric interludes grew fewer and farther between. Halfway up, there was no sound from him but labored breathing, and he began muttering something about chainsaws when the pretty, soft little plants that had invaded the lower part of the path were replaced by great hulking thornbushes.
Three-quarters of the way up, I had mercy and took the shoulder bag, but by the time Bill had dragged his scratched and aching body up the last stretch of path, he was muddy, sweaty, and pooped and seemed to have a very clear idea of why it was called Pouter’s Hill. He looked ready to sulk for a week.
Until we saw what lay before us.
The path had deposited us in a glade that overlooked the land beyond the hill. A wide valley opened out below, a patchwork of bright yellow and pale green and deep, rich brown; of freshly planted fields and newly turned earth crisscrossed with low stone walls and woven together by the meandering course of a stream which glinted silver in the sunlight. Sheep grazed on distant hillsides and a pair of hawks soared in wide, sweeping arcs across the flawless blue sky. It was the clearing in the photograph, come to life.
“My God,” Bill murmured, his voice hushed with awe.
The scene below looked as though it hadn’t changed for a hundred years. I sensed a stillness in the clearing, in myself, that I had never felt before, a tranquility as timeless as the hills that rolled away to the horizon. I knew as surely as I knew my own name that whatever terrible thing had happened to Dimity hadn’t happened here.