A Half Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb Read Free Book Online Page B

following the cliff edge, and was leaning backwards, trying to see around the end wall of the cottage, when the door cracked open.
    The face that peered around the door was pale, lined, and bright with anxiety. An elderly woman with a thick cascade of white hair hanging loosely around her face. Cheeks limp and deeply scored, and a hump across her shoulders that forced her to turn her head slightly to look up at Zach. She took a step backwards when their eyes met, as if she’d changed her mind and would slam the door again, but froze. Hazel-and-green eyes watched him with such suspicion, such doubt.
    “Hello . . . I’m sorry to bother you.” He paused in case she would greet him, but her mouth stayed shut. It was a wide mouth, thin lipped, but the ghost of bow shape, of a delicately pronounced upper lip, was still visible. “Um, my name’s Zach Gilchrist and I was told . . . that is, I was hoping I might be able to have a quick chat with you about something? If it’s not too much trouble, if you’re not busy?” There was a long pause and Zach’s polite smile began to feel too heavy for his face. He struggled to keep it from drooping. The breeze went in through the door and lifted up tresses of the woman’s white hair, moving it gently like seaweed under water.
    “Busy?” she said eventually, and quietly.
    “Yes, if you’re busy now I could . . . come back another time? Maybe?”
    “Come back?” she echoed, and then Zach’s smile did fade to nothing, because he feared that old age had muddled her, and she didn’t understand what he was saying. He took a steadying breath and prepared to take his leave, disappointment gripping him. Then she spoke again. “What do you want to talk about?” She spoke with a Dorset accent so strong the words seemed to buzz in his ears, and had a peculiar cadence that was somewhat hard to follow. Zach remembered what Pete Murray had said, about pitching himself right. He had no idea what might be the right way, and on instinct he chose the family connection.
    “My grandmother knew Charles Aubrey—she met him while she was on her summer holidays here, back before the war. The artist, Charles Aubrey? In fact . . . I’ve always wondered if there’s a chance he was my real grandfather. I think they might have had an affair. I was wondering if you might remember him? Or her? If you could tell me anything about him?” he said. The woman stood as still as stone, but then gradually her mouth fell open a little and Zach heard her breathe in; a long, uneven breath like a gasp in slow motion.
    “Do I remember him?” she whispered, and Zach was about to answer when he saw that she wouldn’t hear him if he did. Her eyes had slipped out of focus. “Do I remember him? We were to be wed, you know,” she said, blinking and looking up with a sketchy smile.
    “Really? You were?” Zach said, trying to square this with what he knew of Aubrey’s life.
    “Oh yes. He adored me—and I adored him. Such a love we had! Like Romeo and Juliet it was. But real. Oh, it was real,” she said intently. Zach smiled at the light in her eyes.
    “Well, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad to have met somebody who remembers him fondly . . . Would you be willing to tell me a bit more about it? About him?”
    “You looked a little bit like him, as you came down the track. Now I think not. I think not. I can’t see how you could be his grandson. No, I can’t see it. He had no other love but me . . .”
    “Perhaps, but surely he . . . he had other . . . women,” Zach said haltingly, and then regretted it at once when he saw how her face fell. “Could I come in, maybe? You can tell me more about him,” he said hopefully. The woman seemed to consider this, and a little color came into her cheeks.
    “Other women,” she muttered peevishly. “Come in, then. I’ll make tea. But you’re not his grandson. No, you’re not.” She stepped back to let him in, and Zach thought she didn’t