He didn’t work fast. They took breaks, and drank tea, and put the lights on when it got dark outside. But Dimity didn’t seem in the least impatient. On the contrary, she grew still and serene under his scrutiny, as though waiting to be drawn came as naturally to her as breathing. He tried to capture the wisps of beauty hidden in her disheveled face; tried to imply with subtle shading the way her irises, though surrounded by whites gone grayish-yellow, remained a warm hazel color, perfectly halfway between green and brown. When he finally finished, there was a cramp blazing in his pen hand, and his neck was aching. But when he looked at his drawing, it was Dimity Hatcher. Quite unmistakably. It was the best work he’d done in years.
“Will you show me?” Dimity asked with a dreamy half smile. At once, Zach’s quiet satisfaction dissolved into anxiety. But he took a breath and handed the picture to her. Her face fell into lines of dismay, and her hand rose halfway to her mouth before fluttering back into her lap. “Oh,” she said.
“Look, it’s not very good. I’m sorry-nothing like being drawn by Aubrey, I’m sure…”
“No,” she murmured softly. “But it is good… it’s good. But I thought… silly, really… I thought I might see myself as I was. As I was in all these other pictures you brought me. I might be beautiful again.”
“You are, though. Far more beautiful than I’ve managed to draw you… Blame the artist, not the sitter, Dimity,” said Zach.
“But it is me. It’s a good likeness. You’re very talented,” she said, nodding slowly. Zach smiled, heartened by this verdict. “Will you take a meal in payment for this picture?”
“You want to keep it?” said Zach.
“Yes, if I can. It’ll be the last one, after all. Who else will draw me, before the end?” She smiled sadly, but Zach was pleased to see how much calmer she seemed now than when he’d arrived. As though being drawn had soothed her troubled spirit.
“All right, then. What’s for dinner?”
It was late when he finally took his leave of Dimity, thanking her for dinner, which had been bacon, eggs, and greens, and giving no answer when she asked when he would be back. It was dark outside, a greenish dark that he found he could see quite well in, after a while, even though he had no flashlight. In the field behind Southern Farmhouse, the Portland ewes dotted the hillside with their lambs keeping close to their heels. From time to time he heard them call to one another, throaty and plaintive. He felt something like affection for them, something almost like pride. As though in helping with the lambing, in sleeping with their mistress, he had taken on some responsibility for them. They’re not your sheep and she’s not your woman. That is not your life, he told himself firmly. It was time to banish the pleasant daydream he’d been having, of Elise sitting at Hannah’s kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. It was clearly never going to happen. In the dream, the farm kitchen was clean, tidy, warm. No longer a wreck of a place, a shrine to Hannah’s loss and grief. He excised the images from his mind as carefully as he could, but the process still cut him. The breeze slipped damp fingers down his collar, and he was hit by a sudden rush of loneliness. A tawny owl came to hunt the field in front of him, crisscrossing the pasture on silent wings. He envied its sense of purpose.
On a whim, he walked down towards the cliffs. Saying good-bye again, he realized. He stood and listened to the invisible sea. There was a brisk wind blowing, and the waves against the rocks sounded hurried, impatient. By straining his eyes, he could just about see their white crests as they frothed ashore, and then another light sparkled, like a jewel against the black. Zach blinked, and thought he’d imagined it. But then it came again, from beyond the beach, out on the water. No, not on the water, he realized. On the stone jetty. A flashlight beam, lancing out to sea. Zach’s breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t see the light’s source, couldn’t see a hand or an arm, only the glitter of the beam on the water, stretching out into the blackness. But he knew, he knew, it was Hannah. The sky was overcast with cloud, no stars to light the scene, no moon to make it glow. A cold, hard dark, perfect for keeping secrets. It was Tuesday night.
A minute passed, then another. The wind blew Zach’s coat open and parted around him coldly. He was riveted to the spot, his heart bumping uncomfortably. And then, another light appeared out on the water. Coming along the coast from the west; the single larger beam of a boat’s spotlight. It maneuvered in a wide arc opposite the bay, then came in straight towards the flashlight beam, slow and steady, slightly to the left of the stone jetty. In the tiny spot of light from Hannah’s light, Zach saw a man’s large form, swathed in waterproofs; the white side of the boat, the orange flash of a life buoy. Then, as the boat reached the side of the jetty and stopped, both lights went out, and there was nothing more to see. Zach remained, listening hard. During a slight lull in the wind a minute later, he heard the boat’s engine gunning as it reversed, pulling away again; then he heard nothing more.
Zach’s thoughts were rushing, tumbling along, and he was paralyzed by the need to do something, to react in some way. But in what way, he had no idea. They had smuggled something in from the sea. Something paid for in secret, that needed the cover of night and as little light as possible. James Horne and his boat, and Hannah to know the way, to guide him in. Whatever they had brought was obviously illegal. More pictures of Dennis, he thought, or was that only one line of trade? Did they deal in worse things as well? He stood with the silent bulk of The Watch behind him and the invisible drop down to the ocean in front of him, and felt as though the whole of Blacknowle had shut him out. It had seemed for a while as though he might settle, as though he might be included there. He’d thought that Dimity Hatcher was his friend; that Hannah was his girlfriend. That he would be the one to put Blacknowle on the map with a wholly different book about Charles Aubrey. But now he saw that it had all been a misconstruction on his part. He’d been played along with to a point, and then brushed aside. Zach felt the pain of this rejection beneath a rising swell of anger. Below him, the sea hissed in the dark.
He strode back towards the village at a rapid pace, so that he was out of breath by the time he got to the top of the track. He moved as though he had a purpose, when in truth he had no idea where his walk would terminate, and what he would do when it did. His anger was directionless, purposeless, just like his impatient speed. But in the next moment, both were abruptly curtailed for him. When he saw what was up ahead, at the top of the lane to Southern Farm, Zach’s pace dwindled to nothing. He stood and stared. Three police cars were parked nose-to-tail, tucked into the hedge at the top of the lane. One had its lights on, its engine running softly. Uniformed officers either sat in their vehicles or waited in the road beside them; three stood in a tight knot nearest the running car, their dark clothing the perfect camouflage on such a dark night. They looked tense, alert. One looked over at Zach where he stood, stock-still, in the middle of the road. The shock of that sudden scrutiny pushed Zach into motion again, and he carried on towards them with a prickle of misplaced guilt. He walked right past them, trying not to seem curious, and as he did there was a blast of static from a radio, and the officer who’d noticed him dipped his head towards the microphone.