As she walked past the post box across the village green, a hand on her arm startled her out of her thoughts. Celeste’s elegant fingers were clasped tightly around her wrist. The Moroccan woman was hunkered down behind the pillar box as though playing hide-and-seek, her lovely face dangerous with anxiety and temper. Instinctively, Dimity recoiled from her.
“Mitzy, wait. Do you see that man-the one Charles is talking to?” Celeste whispered. She pulled on Dimity’s arm so that they could talk closely without Celeste having to leave her hiding place.
“Yes, Celeste. Yes, I see him,” said Dimity nervously.
“That’s the milksop’s husband. Have you seen her, too? You know who I mean?”
“Yes.” The large-chested woman who looked like a bitch in heat in spite of her prim outfits, she thought.
“Have you ever seen her with Charles? Just the two of them, I mean. Maybe out for a walk, or talking… Have you seen them?”
“No, I don’t think so…”
“You don’t think so, or you have not?” Celeste pressed. Her fingernails were cutting into Dimity’s skin, but just like with Valentina, suddenly Dimity didn’t dare pull away.
“I haven’t. I haven’t seen them together, I’m sure,” she said. Celeste stared at the two men for a second longer, then fixed her eyes on Dimity. Her grip vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
“Good. That’s good. If you do see them together, you must tell me,” said Celeste. Dimity’s mouth was dry at the strangeness of the encounter, and she was about to refuse when the look in Celeste’s eyes stopped her. There was something like panic, underneath her anger. Something hunted, and frantic. Dimity nodded hurriedly. “Good girl. Good girl, Mitzy.” Celeste turned, and was about to walk away when she paused, and added: “Say nothing of this to the girls. I beg of you.”
The next time she was at Littlecombe, with her hair piled up again in the hope of meeting Charles, Dimity was disappointed to find him out. Since it was a gray day, she agreed to stay indoors and teach Delphine and Élodie how to make strawberry jam. Delphine saw her searching the room as she entered, since the car was parked outside, and gave her a mildly censorious look.
“Daddy’s gone out. Were you supposed to sit for him today?” she asked carefully.
“Oh, no,” Dimity said hurriedly. “I was just hoping for… My mother was asking, you see. About the… extra money.” She lowered her voice to tell this lie, and was ashamed to see sympathy replace consternation on her friend’s face.
“Yes of course. How silly of me to forget,” Delphine murmured. “Perhaps you can have one or two jars of jam instead, once we’ve made it. Would that help?”
“Yes, thank you.” They smiled at each other, and set about hulling the vibrant red fruit. Delphine asked about Wilf, and Dimity answered at mischievous length, even though in truth she had scarcely thought of him, let alone met with him, since the Aubreys’ return. Soon the kitchen was rich with the scent of strawberries, and when Celeste came downstairs she took a deep breath and smiled. She looked tired, and there were stern lines at the corners of her mouth that Dimity couldn’t recall seeing there before.
“What a glorious perfume, girls!” she said. “Something to remind us it is summer, in spite of the dark weather.” It had indeed been a bleak sort of summer until then, but Dimity had hardly cared to notice. “Well, sunshine or no sunshine, I must have some air. I’ll be in the garden, if you need me.”
Two hours later, when the jam was potted up and Élodie was up to her elbows in soap suds at the sink, scrubbing the pans, Dimity walked carefully to the back door with a brimming cup of tea for Celeste. Through the crack by the jamb she saw a flash of blue, and she paused, recognizing Charles’s peculiar linen tunic, the one dotted and smeared with fingerprints in paint. His voice was soft and measured, as if by speaking too robustly he might damage Celeste, inflict a wound.
“But it’s impossible right now, Celeste, you know that… I’ve just started a new piece. I need Mitzy to pose for it, and we need the money…”
“You can work over there just as well, I know you can. Think how much work you did the first time you went!”
“Well, I had you to inspire me then,” said Charles. Through the narrow gap, Dimity saw the white gleam of his smile.
“And do you not have me to inspire you now?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“We can leave the children with your parents. I’m sure they would look after them, if you explained to them…”
“You know they wouldn’t. You know how my mother feels, about our… situation.”
“But if you told her… if you explained that we need to go away. That I need to go away. And we need to be together, Charles. Mon cher. Together like man and wife, like it was in the beginning. To remember the light and the love and the life between us, when right now all has grown dim…”
“Delphine and Élodie are the greatest expressions of that love, Celeste, why leave them behind? They love it there, you know they do…”
“Or we could leave them with Mitzy! She is a sensible girl. How old is she now? Sixteen? She could look after them, I know she could. She could come and stay here in the house…” Hope flared in Celeste’s voice.
“It’s out of the question.” The words were flat, adamant. “That mother of hers would surely involve herself in some way, and really Dimity is still only a child herself.” No, thought Dimity, holding her breath, poised on tiptoes. I am a swan. He did not want to go away with Celeste. He wanted to stay in Blacknowle, with her. Joy flared up like fire.
“Please, Charles. I feel like something is dying inside me. I just can’t stay here anymore. And I feel something dying between us, too… this distance between us, always growing. I need to go home. I need to be where I belong. And I need to be with you, like it was on our honeymoon, like it was when we first met and we were the center of the whole universe. Just you and me, and nobody else… No suspicion, no betrayal.” She reached out, grasping Charles’s hand so tightly that her fingers went white. There was a long, hung moment.
“If you’d met Dimity’s mother… there would be no question of you wanting to leave our children with her…”
“But Dimity can stay here with them-we can pay her well for it! That at least always pleases the mother, no?”
“Pay her well for that, and pay for us to travel again, and all the while earn nothing, for without Mitzy I cannot keep working…”
“Mon dieu!” Celeste spat in sudden rage. “There was a time when there were more things under the sun for you to paint than Mitzy Hatcher!”
“All right, Celeste, calm down-”
“I will not! Always we go where you say, always we live our lives around you, and your work. I gave up everything to be with you, Charles, and I ask very little of you, and yet this one thing you could grant me, to make me happy… Must I fight and beg, always?” She shook her head in disbelief, and then her eyes blazed. “It is that woman, isn’t it? It’s her that keeps you here!”
“What woman? What are you talking about?”
“The one staying at the pub. The tourist woman with the fiancé she barely looks at… the one who has to touch herself each time she sees you… Don’t pretend you don’t know!”