A Half Forgotten Song Read Online Free PDF Page B

Tyneham—that strange ghost village appropriated by the War Office in 1943 as a training ground for troops and then never returned to its residents. Zach’s parents had taken him to the village when he was a child, as part of an August bank holiday break in the area. Zach most clearly remembered Lulworth Cove, because there’d been an ice cream—much hankered after but rarely had—and the beach’s perfect, round crescent had seemed so unreal, almost like something from another country. He’d filled his pockets with the smooth white pebbles until the lining split, and cried when his mother made him empty them out before getting back into the car. You can keep one, his dad had said, shooting his fractious mother a thunderous look. Now Zach wondered how he’d failed to realize how unhappy they were. In Blacknowle itself, his father had wandered the short streets with an expectant look on his face, as if he was sure of finding something, or someone. Whatever it was, by the end of the holiday the look was gone; replaced by a settled sadness and disappointment. There’d been disappointment of another kind on his mother’s face.
    Zach followed a lane so narrow that dusty lengths of cow parsley whipped his mirrors on either side. On the backseat were a hastily packed suitcase and a cardboard box containing all the notes he had accumulated for his book on Charles Aubrey. There were more than he remembered. The box’s handles had sagged dangerously when he’d heaved it out from under his bed. His laptop was zipped up in its bag next to the box, full of pictures of Elise and ways of contacting her; and that was all he had with him. No, he corrected himself ruefully. That’s all I have. He came to the village around the next bend, but the road carried on south, towards where the land dipped and then disappeared into the sea, and Zach was suddenly unwilling to arrive. He had so little idea of what he would do when he did that he felt uneasy, almost afraid. He accelerated again, and carried on through the village, another mile or so, till the lane ended at a small, weed-strewn parking area. There was a faded orange-and-white life buoy, an abrupt sign warning of tides and submerged rocks, and a crumbling lip of land beneath which the gray sea rolled in, choppy and restless.
    Zach considered his next move. He knew for a fact that the house Charles Aubrey had rented as his summer house was no more—other people had tried to visit it, but it had burned down at some point in the 1950s, and not even the foundations were visible anymore. The exact spot had been built over in the 1960s, by the council road that formed a large loop to the southwest of the village. He watched the white froth of the sea for a few minutes. The water looked cold and hostile as it broke over the rocky shore, constantly moving, seething. He could hear it grumbling beneath the higher sound the wind made, parting around his car. This sound, and the flat gray light, suddenly seemed desolate, seemed to echo around the emptiness inside him, magnifying it unbearably. He felt as though he barely existed, and he fought the feeling, thinking hard.
    Blacknowle was where it had all started. The rift between his grandparents, the distance between his father and his grandpa that had hurt his father so. This was where Aubrey had cast his spell over Zach’s family, and this was where the man’s memory still held thrall. Where pictures that both had to be and couldn’t be by Aubrey were quietly emerging for sale from some hiding place. Zach opened the car door. He’d thought it would be cold; had pulled his shoulders up in anticipation, ready to shiver. Tensed against an onslaught that didn’t come. The breeze was warm and moist, and now it was in his ears it sounded excited, enthusiastic. An ebullient, thrumming sound, not a moan at all. Minute speckles of water landed on his skin and seemed to rouse him, waking him from a trance he hadn’t known he was in. He took a