Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity's Death

“Another uncomfortable memory?” he suggested. “Your mother did find her there, wandering about in a daze.”

“As though whatever happened had happened recently,” I said. “And Dimity went there… why?”

“Because she’d been happy there? Because it reminded her of better days?”

“What a shock it must have been to find it deserted, boarded up…. Yet she used it as the setting for one of her most cheerful stories.” I riffled through the manuscript. “You know, Bill—Dimity said she wrote these for me and for my mother. I’m beginning to wonder if she wrote them for herself as well.”

* * *

I rose early the next day, showered, then put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, heavy socks, and my hiking boots. I tied the arms of a sweater around my waist, in case the sun decided to hide its face again, and tucked the topographic map and the photograph in my back pocket. After a light breakfast, I was ready to face the great outdoors.

Bill, on the other hand, didn’t look ready for anything more strenuous than a stroll across a putting green. He met me at nine o’clock in the solarium dressed in his usual tweed sport-coat, button-down oxford shirt, and corduroy trousers. The only thing out of the ordinary was the absence of a tie.

“Don’t you have any other clothes?” I asked.

“You sound like my father,” he said, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“You should listen to your father. But I’m not talking about matters of taste at the moment. I’m talking about survival.” I looked doubtfully at his smooth-soled leather shoes. “Even a pair of sneakers would have better traction than those, and I think you’re going to swelter in that jacket. Didn’t you ever climb any hills when you were in Africa?”

“I had a Land Rover,” Bill replied evenly. “Besides, Emma said there was a path.”

“A rough path, in a roughly vertical direction.” I poked the bulging canvas bag he’d slung over one shoulder. “What’s in there?”

“A few necessities. Let’s see….” He opened the bag and rummaged through it. “A bottle of water, a loaf of bread, some cheese, a few bars of chocolate, the emergency lantern from the car, a throw rug, a trowel from the utility room, a camera—”

“We’re not going on safari,” I protested. “Trust me on this, Bill—that bag is going to weigh a ton before we get to the top. You’re going to wish you’d left some of that stuff behind.”

“You let me worry about that.” Throwing open the solarium door, he strode out into the garden. “What a glorious day!”

He was right about that much, at least. It felt so good to be outside that I had to restrain myself from taking off at a run. A sheep meadow stretched green and serene to the west, the oak grove stood to the east, and ahead of us rose Pouter’s Hill.

We crossed the sunken terrace of the back garden, then went up the stairs and through the gate in the gray stone wall and out into a grassy meadow. A graveled path led us between the pair of redbuds I had seen from the deck, to a willow-shaded brook that ran along the foot of the hill. The rustic bridge that spanned it practically pointed to an opening in the trees. We consulted the map, decided it was the path Emma had pointed out, and started up. I fell silent, saving my breath for the climb, but Bill spent enough for both of us.

“Birdsong, bluebells, and bracken,” he rhapsodized. “Soft breezes to speed us on our way. Good, honest sweat, the heady scent of spring, and a winding path beneath our feet.” He paused to take off his sportcoat and mop his brow. “Ah, Lori, it’s wonderful to be alive.”

“Right,” I said, and kept on walking. As the good, honest sweat began cascading down Bill’s face, his lyric interludes grew fewer and farther between. Halfway up, there was no sound from him but labored breathing, and he began muttering something about chainsaws when the pretty, soft little plants that had invaded the lower part of the path were replaced by great hulking thornbushes.

Three-quarters of the way up, I had mercy and took the shoulder bag, but by the time Bill had dragged his scratched and aching body up the last stretch of path, he was muddy, sweaty, and pooped and seemed to have a very clear idea of why it was called Pouter’s Hill. He looked ready to sulk for a week.

Until we saw what lay before us.

The path had deposited us in a glade that overlooked the land beyond the hill. A wide valley opened out below, a patchwork of bright yellow and pale green and deep, rich brown; of freshly planted fields and newly turned earth crisscrossed with low stone walls and woven together by the meandering course of a stream which glinted silver in the sunlight. Sheep grazed on distant hillsides and a pair of hawks soared in wide, sweeping arcs across the flawless blue sky. It was the clearing in the photograph, come to life.

“My God,” Bill murmured, his voice hushed with awe.

The scene below looked as though it hadn’t changed for a hundred years. I sensed a stillness in the clearing, in myself, that I had never felt before, a tranquility as timeless as the hills that rolled away to the horizon. I knew as surely as I knew my own name that whatever terrible thing had happened to Dimity hadn’t happened here.

I took the photograph from my pocket and held it up, glancing at it as I moved slowly across the open space. “This is where the picture was taken,” I said, coming to a halt.

Bill came over to where I was standing, looked down at the photograph, and pointed. “There’s the ridge Emma’s son fell from. And there’s the tree.”

The gnarled old oak tree stood by itself at the edge of the clearing, and we walked over, drawn to its cool circle of shade. I set the bag gently on the ground, not wishing to disturb the stillness, and Bill dropped his jacket on top of it, then gazed out over the land below. He turned, startled, when I uttered a soft cry.

A heart had been carved into the old tree. It was darkened with age, and the bark had grown back over some of it, but the initials it encircled were still plainly visible.

“RM & D—” I looked at Bill. “RM and Dimity Westwood. RM. Who’s RM?”

“Someone who came up here with her,” Bill guessed, “and took pictures to commemorate the day? Maybe someone who went to the zoo with her as well?” He traced the heart with a fingertip. “Clearly someone she loved.”

I sank to the ground at the foot of the tree, and Bill sat beside me. He took the water bottle from the bag and we each had a drink. Pouring some water into his cupped hand, he cooled his face, then recapped the bottle and put it away. He sat with his back against the rough bark while I watched the hawks glide gracefully through the air.

Whose hand had carved that heart? What had happened to him? I closed my eyes and sensed… something. A dream of distant laughter, a memory of voices, a whisper of sweet words echoing down through time; the stillness at the center of a raging world.

“Lori?”

Bill’s voice came to me from a long way off. Closer, much closer were those other voices, low voices murmuring, whispering, echoing, then snatched away by a roaring wind. I strained to hear them, but the roar of the wind was followed by silence. I felt a sadness, an intense longing, a sense of loss so powerful that it struck me like a blow. Who had come with Dimity to this still and peaceful place? Whom had she lost to the chaos that surrounded it?

Bill put his hand on my shoulder.

“A soldier,” I said, unaware that I was speaking the words aloud. “RM was a soldier, a boy Dimity loved, who joined up early and was killed.”

“Was he?” said Bill.

“I… I don’t know.” I opened my eyes and put a hand to my forehead, squinting against the sun’s sudden glare. “I don’t know, but I thought I heard… Did you hear it?”