Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Death

The natural features and elevations…

With a sharp glance to make sure Bill was still asleep, I reached into my bag and pulled out the photograph, kicking myself for not having thought of this sooner.

A small clearing on a hill overlooking a broad valley. Beyond the valley, a series of hills, all of them of uniform height and shape. Excited now, I took out the topographic map. It would be child’s play to locate the clearing if it was anywhere near the cottage.

Except that the cottage was smack-dab in the middle of the Cotswolds, which meant that it was surrounded by hills and valleys, and I hadn’t learned enough from Willis, Sr.’s short lesson to be able to distinguish one hill from another. As soon as I opened the map, I saw that there were at least a dozen places that seemed to meet my requirements. I pored over the maze of curving lines, as though staring at it would force it to yield up its secrets, until Bill’s voice broke my concentration.

“Planning a walking tour?” he asked, peering at the map with great interest. A scant two days ago, I would have bristled and told him to mind his own business. Now I tilted the map so he could see it better.

“A bon voyage present, from your father,” I explained.

“You’re kidding.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Did you manage to keep a straight face?”

“More or less. Well, I mean, you’re supposed to grin when you get presents, aren’t you?”

“I wish we’d hidden a camera in the office. I would love to have seen his face when he saw his map.”

“Thanks for remembering to smuggle it down.” I refolded the topographic map, trying to recall the words I’d rehearsed the night before. “And, Bill, about the frame. I just want to say that—”

“What’s this?” Bill was folding the blanket I had put over him, but he stopped and reached for something on the floor. When he sat up again, he was holding the photograph. “Is it yours?”

I nodded, too shocked by my own carelessness to speak.

“It must have fallen when you moved the map. Very pretty. Where is it?”

“England,” I said. “It’s… a place my mother visited. During the war.”

“It must mean a lot to you,” said Bill. “I have my mother’s photo albums up in my rooms, and I go through them every once in a while. Do you do that?” He handed the photograph to me. I put it and the map in my carryon and zipped the bag securely before answering.

“No,” I replied, in a tone that persuaded most people to drop the subject.

“It was hard for me at first, too,” he said. “I’d just turned twelve. I was away at school when the news came—she’d been hit by a bus and killed instantly. That’s one of the reasons Father doesn’t care for public transportation.” He gave me a sidelong look. “I wasn’t making that up, you know.

“It’s never easy to lose a parent,” he continued, “but at that age…” He creased the folds of the blanket carefully between his finger and thumb. “That’s when I claimed Arthur’s dome for my own. I think part of me believed that if I looked hard enough through the telescope, I’d be able to find her.” He unbuckled his seat belt. “Thanks for covering me up, by the way. I’d hate to arrive in London with the sniffles.” He stood up and stashed the blanket in an overhead bin.

“You’re welcome.” I hoped the interruption might turn his mind to other things, but when he sat down again, he picked up where he’d left off.

“When I went back to school after the funeral I felt like a freak. The faculty had briefed the other boys not to say anything that might upset me, so they ended up not saying anything at all. It confused the hell out of me, as though my mother had done something that couldn’t be mentioned in polite company.”

“You didn’t want to talk about it, did you?” I said.

“No, but I didn’t want a hush to fall over the room every time the word ‘mother’ came up. It was a relief when Father pulled me out of classes to go with him to England.”

“That’s when you met Dimity.” I began to pay closer attention.

“We stayed at her town house in London. It was a fantastic place, and I had the run of it. I spent most of my time in the attics, going through dozens of dusty crates. I found gramophone records, kaleidoscopes—even an old cat’s-whisker radio that still worked. And Dimity was… I don’t know what I’d have done without her. She didn’t tiptoe around the subject. We’d be in the walled garden and she’d ask what flowers my mother liked best. Then she’d fill baskets with them and put them all around the house, just like that, as though it was the most normal thing in the world. And every night, she told me stories.”

“Aunt Dimity stories?”

“No,” said Bill, with a brief smile. “As far as I know, those stories were created exclusively for you. Mine had a different heroine entirely.”

“But they helped, those stories?” I was intrigued in spite of myself.

“Yes. They helped.” He was silent for a moment. “I’d like to read your stories someday. Perhaps we can work an exchange. How about it?” He nudged my arm. “I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.”

“Only if you behave yourself,” I said.

“I am a paragon of good behavior,” he replied. “Father would have sent a chaperone to stand guard over you at the cottage otherwise. I was planning on staying there, if it’s okay with you. There’s plenty of room, apparently, and it’ll be that much easier for me to run errands for you. Father suggested that I check into a local hotel, but I convinced him that his ideas of propriety weren’t exactly au courant. We’re hardly a pair of teenagers, are we?”

The challenge in his eyes was more than I could resist—and if necessary, I could send him on some extremely time-consuming errands. With a toss of the head, I replied, “Fine with me, as long as I can get my work done.”

“You won’t know I’m there.” He took a fountain pen and a small, leatherbound notebook out of his pocket. “As long as we’re discussing details of the trip, there are a few questions I’d like to ask before we land. Father said that your mother met Dimity Westwood in London during the war. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I said. “My mother was sent over with a team of advisors before we’d even declared war on Germany, and she stayed on until VE Day.”

“What did she do?”

“She was a clerk, a secretary—a paper-shuffler, as she put it. Now that I know about Dimity I’d like to see the city the way they saw it, go to the places they went.”

“Such as?” He uncapped the pen and opened the notebook.

“Such as… Well, some of this may not make sense to you,” I said. “They aren’t places usually associated with the Second World War.”

“But they are places you associate with your mother.”

“She tried to see everything. You remember the story I told you and your father the night I arrived at the mansion? The one about the torch?” Harrod’s went into the notebook, along with the zoo, the Tate Gallery, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and several other museums and monuments that didn’t require explanation. When I had run out of places, Bill capped his pen, then returned it and the notebook to his pocket.

“We’ll see what we can do,” he said.

I stifled a jaw-cracking yawn. “We may have to wait until tomorrow to start. I can feel jet lag setting in already.”

“This isn’t your first trip overseas?” Bill asked.

“Hardly,” I replied. “But don’t get me started on that. I’ve been known to bore strong men to tears with my hitchhiking stories.”

He pulled a large white handkerchief from his breast pocket and regarded me expectantly.