Read Online A Half Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb - Free Book Online

down by the river I chanced for to stray; I heard a fair maid making loud lamentation, singing Jimmy will be slain in the wars I be feared . . . She stopped suddenly, heard the faintest echo of the tune carrying on behind her. In a deep voice, a man’s voice— his voice. Prickles like the lick of a cat’s tongue went roughly down her spine, and she froze. In the silence then Dimity heard the pencil, softly scraping the paper. A dry caress. She knew not to move, knew that would annoy him. So she carried on, her mind no longer on the job, letting grass stems stay amid the chives and buttercup pass for cress. And all the while she could feel him behind her, feel his eyes upon her, and as if all her senses had come alive she noticed the sun shining hotly on her hair, and the touch of a breeze on the skin of her lower back where her blouse had ridden up. A small area of skin that suddenly seemed utterly, wantonly naked. In her hand she had posies, her cheeks were like roses . . . she sang on, and behind her he answered the tune, and she felt it fill her heart, fill it up to bursting.
    “What color was your hair?” Zach asked suddenly. Dimity blinked, and seemed to come back from far away. “Sorry, that must sound very rude . . .”
    “Charles said it was bronze,” she said quietly. “He said when the light shone on it, it looked like burnished metal; like a statue of Persephone come alive.” In Zach’s mind he saw all the drawings—all the many, many drawings of Mitzy, and he put this color into the wild hair described by Aubrey’s long, lavish pencil lines. Yes . He could picture it now, as if the color had always been there, waiting for him to see it.
    Suddenly, there was a muffled sound from upstairs. The thump of something being dropped, the smaller thump of it bouncing, just once, and the shuffling creak of a footstep. Dimity turned her eyes to the ceiling and waited, as if something else was coming. Puzzled, Zach also glanced up at the sooty rafters as if he might be able to see through them.
    “What was that?” he asked. For a second, Dimity looked at him as if he hadn’t spoken, then her expression changed, grew startled.
    “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just . . . mice,” she said rapidly. Her fingers in their red mittens fiddled with her hair, rolling the frayed ends to and fro, twisting them. She looked away, her gaze floating aimlessly along the wall.
    “Mice?” said Zach, dubiously. It had sounded like something bigger than that. The old woman considered at length before replying. She rocked her feet one way, then the other—to the toes, to the heels, back again.
    “Yes. Nothing to worry about. Just mice.”
    “Are you sure? It sounded like somebody dropped something.”
    “I’m sure. Nobody up there to go dropping anything. But maybe I’ll check. So then, you’ll go on for now? Finished up your tea?” she said, standing stiffly and holding out her hand for it. She looked troubled, distracted. Zach was only halfway down his cup, but he handed it to her anyway. The rim was chipped hazardously, and it tasted as though the milk had turned.
    “Okay, sure. It was lovely to meet you, Miss Hatcher. Thanks for the tea, and for talking to me.” She was herding him to the door, bustling around him, eyes down.
    “Yes, yes,” she said vaguely. She pulled the door open and that warm, fresh breeze washed in, and all the sounds of the sea with it. Zach stepped out obediently. The front step was worn into a bowl and water had gathered there; moss in all the pocks and crevices of the stone.
    “Could I come back and see you again, do you think?” he asked. She began to shake her head automatically. “I would be so grateful . . . I could bring some of the pictures Aubrey drew of you, if you like? Not the original ones, of course, but prints of them . . . in books. You could tell me what it was like as he drew them . . . what you were doing that day. Or something,” he tried. She seemed