“No.”
“Yes, I do! I love you like no other. Marry me, Mitzy. I’d be good to you… we’d have a good life, I swear it! We can even leave Blacknowle, if that’s what you want. My uncle in Bristol has a job waiting for me, if I want it. At the shipping company where he works. You’d never have to see Blacknowle or The Watch or your ma again, if that’s what you want. We could have a baby straightaway, if you like. And we could take our honeymoon anywhere you wanted… Wales, or St. Ives, or wherever!” He gave her a little shake and Dimity blinked. But she was too lost in her own misery to realize that he had been dreaming all this, just as she’d been dreaming life in London with Charles. That thoughts of her had been what kept him awake at night, what made his hand stray down low beneath the blankets. She pulled her arms away from him.
“Get off me!”
“Mitzy? Haven’t you heard what I’ve said?”
“I heard you,” she said dully. “Wales? St. Ives? Is that how big you think the world is? Is that as far as you can imagine?”
Wilf frowned. “No. But it’s as far as I can afford to travel just yet. I’m not stupid, Mitzy. And I know I’m not as exciting to you as… some others might seem. But this is real, not some impossible dream. This is a real life I’m offering you. We can save up… I can start saving and take you overseas, too. It don’t cost too much to cross the Channel…”
“No.”
“No?”
“That’s my answer, Wilf. I won’t marry you. I don’t want you.”
Wilf was silent for a while; put his hands in his pockets and seemed ready to wait, as if waiting might make her change her mind. Eventually he took a long, heavy breath.
“He won’t marry you, Mitzy. I can promise you that an’ all.”
“What do you know about it? You’re just like everyone here! Watching and chattering and thinking you know my business!” she said, anger flaring at his words.
“I know enough to know he won’t marry you. He can’t. He-”
“Just shut up! You know nothing about it! Nothing!” The words were ragged, savage; put tears in Wilf’s eyes as he looked at her.
“I know enough. I love you, Mitzy. I could make you happy…”
“You could not.” She turned away from him and folded her arms, and for a long time she could sense him there, standing behind her, waiting. She heard him sniffle a bit, blow his nose, clear his throat. At some point she realized that he’d gone, and could not say for sure when he’d left. She glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t see him on the beach or on the path up through Southern Farm. For a second she felt panic grip her, but she ignored it, and took the inland path towards the village.
Wilf had said Charles was in the pub, so that was where she went. She walked right up to the window, nervous excitement making her teeth chatter. She caught the tip of her tongue between them, and tasted blood. The inside of the pub was shady and dim, but she could see that it was almost empty. Two men were seated at the bar, but neither one was Charles. She walked across to the village stores and peered inside; then walked a short distance along each of the little lanes that made up the village center. She could not think where else to look, could not think why Charles had not come to find her, to reassure her. She knew he must have some plan; some scheme by which they would soon be together. But she wished, how intensely she wished, that she could find him and hear what it was. Her need to see him was giving her a pain behind her eyes, a pain that built all the time. She gave up on the steep track that led to Northern Farm, and came back down it into the village past the rear elevation of the pub. And then she saw him.
He was in one of the pub’s upstairs rooms, she could see him through the little window, half buried in the tiled eaves. The view was restricted-through the cramped pane she could see his arm and shoulder, his lower jaw. Charles! Dimity wasn’t sure if she had shouted aloud in elation, or if her throat was too tight to make a sound. She waved her arms above her head, but then she stopped and let them fall. Charles was not alone. He was talking to somebody-she could see his mouth moving. And then that somebody stepped into view, and it was the tourist woman. The one who has to touch herself each time she sees you. Celeste’s voice was so clear that Dimity whirled around in confusion, looking for her. Milksop skin. The words were in the hiss of the breeze. The woman appeared to be crying; she dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her blouse. Dimity stared at her, tried to make her not exist. A vast, bottomless chasm had opened at her feet, and she saw no way that she would not fall. There was nothing to save her. Charles took the woman’s hand and raised it to his mouth, pressing a lingering kiss onto the skin. Have you ever seen them together? Celeste whispered in her ear, and the pain in Dimity’s skull spiked unbearably. She clasped her hands to the sides of her head, whimpering in agony; then, with a cry, she fled from the Spout Lantern.
She walked blindly, as the crow flies, across fields and tracks, through the coppice of beech and oak on top of the ridge and down the other side. She soaked her feet in runnels of water, splashed her trousers with reddish mud, got covered in sticky buds, burrs, and gnat bites. She picked as she went, using her shawl as a sling; gathering familiar plants almost without thinking. Sorrel for salad; nettles for tea and kidney tonics, and to feed the blood; milk thistles and pig nuts for stewing; fern to kill tapeworms, dandelion for rheumatism, chicory for a bladder infection. The task was so familiar, had such a natural rhythm that it hypnotized her, silencing the turmoil inside her head.
She passed by the watery ditch at the edge of the woods, where a thick patch of water hemlock grew. Cowbane, it was also called, since it killed the cows that browsed it by mistake. She crouched down amid the tall, deadly plants, surrounded by their innocent-looking umbrellas of white flowers. Their roots wound down into the sandy soil at the bottom of the ditch; long, serrated leaves with the tempting smell of parsley. Water fleas scudded around her feet and a banded demoiselle flew in wide arcs above her head, watching curiously. Dimity wrapped her hand around one woody stem and pulled gently, careful not to bruise it, until the tuberous root came free from the ground. It would taste almost sweet, like parsnip, if eaten. She rinsed it off and laid the plant carefully in the sling, away from the others. Kept apart, reviled, not to be trusted. Separate from all the rest, just as she had always been. Dimity took a slow breath; her mind was quite empty. She went back to pull another stem.
Hours later, with her shawl heavy and cutting into her shoulder, Dimity was still walking. Her legs felt too long, and though everything she saw was familiar to her, still she felt as though she didn’t know it, didn’t belong to it. On the beach she kept bruising her toes and shins by walking into rocks, and could not work out why. Some way farther along the shore she stopped walking altogether, and realized that it was nighttime. She could not see to walk, because the sky was as black as the inside of her mind, without a moon to light it. If this darkness was natural, or because the light had gone out of the whole world, she could not tell. She sat down where she’d been standing, feeling the stones prod her, cool and damp, through her clothes. There she stayed, in the dark, not hearing the waves, because her own crying drowned them out; sobs tearing at her, convulsing her. And all the time she felt like she was falling, like she had stepped into that fathomless chasm and would never reach the surface again. She did not sleep.
In the cold light of the morning, the rising tide roused her, lapping at her feet with icy little ripples. Dimity scratched at her face, itchy with salt, and stood up shakily. She started walking again, with little idea where she would go; just following her feet like before until eventually they brought her to the top of Littlecombe’s driveway. There she paused and stared down at the regular, compact shape of it. There was no sign of the car in the driveway, no sign of anybody in the garden; the windows were all shut. Charles was there. This was where she had first seen him; where he had first drawn her. This was where he slept, where he ate. This was where he had to be. Dimity felt hollow, insubstantial, and a sudden lightness washed through her head, the lightness of joy tempered with something else. Something nameless and bleak; something that had come up from the depths of the chasm to be with her. She stumbled on her bruised feet as she walked down to the kitchen door.