Waterland

by Graham Swift

  Now love, which always finds a way, has its stages. It begins with adoration. Then adoration turns to desire, and desire to cleaving, and cleaving to union. And all these stages it is possible, if it is not natural, for a father and daughter to undergo together. To all these stages the daughter assented, because indeed she adored her poor father and pitied his sorrows, and having been his close and only companion since she was a child, how should she know what was natural and what wasn’t? But as for that other stage which follows union, as for the bearing of love’s fruits (for this was the father’s wish – he wanted a child, a very special sort of child), she baulked and trembled at this.

  So in order to divert her father’s designs, she sowed in his mind the plan of turning their country home, which was far too large, in any case, for just the two of them, into a hospital for victims of the war. Wasn’t that a better plan? To rescue all those poor, sad cases, all of whom would be in a sense their wards, their children. They could move somewhere near, into the Lodge perhaps (no, no, she would never leave him). And she herself would become a nurse.

  But this hospital, into which, indeed, the father put reawakened energies, imagining great things (even miracles), only served to remind them how evil lingers and how things of the past aren’t things of the past. For though the great war ended, the broken-minded soldiers still came and remained. For them life had stopped, though they must go on living. It only deepened the father’s sorrows, this home for hopelessness. And now he wanted a child more than ever. And not just a child either. Because he began to speak of this child as the Saviour of the World. For perhaps, like those poor soldier boys, his mind had become wounded too.

  The daughter reasoned with the father. How would they bring up this child – he a father, and she his daughter?

  Because, working each day at the hospital, she had got used to speaking reasonably about madness, as if it were the normal thing. Coming and going, through the trees, between the lodge and the hospital, she would ask herself, which is the madder place? Who is madder, the crazy soldiers, or the man in the gingerbread house? And sometimes on these journeys to and fro she would stop, while an acorn dropped, a woodpecker drilled, a breeze swung through the beech trees, and say to herself: these are the only sane interludes of my life – if this is what sanity is. She would think: the truth of it is, I’m trapped. My life’s stopped too. Because when fathers love daughters and daughters love fathers it’s like tying up into a knot the thread that runs into the future, it’s like a stream wanting to flow backwards.

  At such moments tears would often slide down her cheeks. Because, for all its being a trap, she loved her father, both in the way a daughter should and in the way a daughter shouldn’t, and she didn’t want to hurt him. And though she didn’t want a child, yet – she wanted a child. She wanted a future. And she was used to nursing men who’d become again like helpless infants. And inside the nurse is the mother.

  So she would linger amongst the trees, like a distressed damsel in the forest.

  But love always finds a way. Because, by and by, there came to the hospital a wounded soldier called Henry. Life had stopped for him too; but it was about to start again. Because, by and by, he recovered, and as he recovered – though Henry would have said these two things were one and the same – he fell in love with this nurse who loved her father. And as he fell in love with her so she fell in love with him. And this second love loosened the knot of the first.

  For one night the daughter said to the father: ‘I assent. I will have your child – if you will give me my freedom.’

  ‘Freedom?’ the father said.

  The daughter looked at the father.

  ‘I love another man.’

  The father’s face fell, but he listened to what his daughter had to say.

  ‘I will bear your child, if first you let me marry this man and live with him, so that when the child is born it will seem like his child and will be brought up by him and me as if it were the true child of our marriage.’

  The father looked long and hard at the daughter.

  ‘Is he a good man?’

  ‘Yes, he is one of the patients at the hospital. He was very ill but now he is almost cured.’

  A faint light entered the father’s sad eyes.

  ‘You have cured him?’

  The daughter said nothing.

  ‘But he loves you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And will you tell him, ever – this husband – whose the child really is?’

  ‘That must be up to me.’

  The light in the father’s eyes flickered, but did not vanish.

  ‘And you will look after him – my son, I mean?’

  ‘If a son it is.’

  ‘And he will be the saviour of the world?’

  ‘He will be the saviour of the world.’

  So the father and the daughter were agreed. Perhaps that very night they set about begetting a child. But what the daughter really hoped (though it grieved her to deceive the father) was that first she would get a child by Henry and that the father would take it for his own. And if, failing this, she got a child by the father then she would never tell Henry whose it was and perhaps never need to. A third possibility – that she might not know herself whose child it was – she scarcely considered, being sure of her mother’s instinct.

  Thus the daughter tried hard by two men at the same time, both of whom she loved, to become pregnant. Though who would be the child’s father would perhaps never become clear till the baby was born. All this as Henry’s wounded mind became more than healed. And then one day when the moment seemed ripe – perhaps it was amidst those same woods, in secret places, where she used to stop in her distress and weep – the daughter started to tell Henry a story …

  But when Henry heard this story (he was like a man in paradise who’d believe anything), this nurse and he were already betrothed and he’d already learnt that he was going to be a father …

  But the story goes on, and Henry Crick’s now a part of it. For not only is the day fixed for his marriage to this beautiful nurse who thereafter will cease to be a nurse but will become a mother, but both a home and future employment are provided for him, through the offices of her father, in the form of the Atkinson Lock and its adjacent cottage, whose present occupant, one John Badcock, is due to retire shortly.

  All through the latter part of summer, while Europe still sorts out its peace treaties, Henry Crick learns the arts of lock-keeping and sluice maintenance from John Badcock, a cautious and reserved man who none the less leaves to the arriving couple as a wedding present and memento of their predecessor a stuffed pike, weight 21 lbs 40zs, in a glass case, caught on the very day (hence its taxidermal preservation) that the Armistice was signed.

  And towards the end of September, while Helen’s still invisible pregnancy advances, various pieces of furniture, household articles, heirlooms and possessions begin to arrive by motor-van both from the one-time home of Henry Crick and his departed parents and the former lodge of the Kessling Hall estate. And these include – it arrives all by itself one morning in the back of a taxi and is addressed expressly to Mrs Henry Crick – a black wooden chest with brass fittings, firmly locked and bearing the initials E. R. A. Ernest knows what’s in it. And Helen knows what in it. But Henry will have to guess.

  And it’s here in this lock-side cottage that one grey dawn in March, under the eye of Ada Berry, the Hockwell and Apton midwife, is born the child that Ernest Atkinson wished to be the saviour of the world.

  And proves to be a potato-head.

  Though that he is not the saviour of the world but a potato-head Ernest Atkinson will never know …

  But let’s go back a bit – to where the light of Paradise still seems real. Henry Crick, newly married and father-to-be, sits one still and dusky Indian-summer evening outside the cottage which is his new home, gazing at the lock and the stretch of river and river-bank which are his special preserve. Illumined by the presence of his beau
tiful and pregnant wife, this flat-vistaed domain has lost the dreadful emptiness that once it had for him, and has not yet come to show the desolation that at later times it will impart. Cocooned, furthermore, in his love for this same beautiful wife of his, he is deaf to the world’s gossip. Because he knows who Ernest Atkinson is. And what is so unheard of about a child conceived out of wedlock and born within it? At this moment Henry Crick possesses the most happiness that a man perhaps can ever possess, the happiness that is set against a foil of trouble, the happiness that is driven like a wedge between past and future pains …

  And suddenly he sees it, flickering and twisting in the fading light along the margins of the river. It comes downstream, out of the twilit distance, keeping to the far bank, moving towards the lock. It ripples, twinkles, now in, now out of the water, now mingling with the reeds; it twirls, whirls, flashes, flutters, flames, grows dim then bright again, skips, hovers, dodges, zips and seems to be saying all the time, ‘Look at me – do I have your full attention? Yes, I see I have your full attention.’ For one instant it seems to take on the flickering shape of a woman. Then as it reaches the barrier of the sluice, it vanishes.

  A will-o’-the-wisp.

  Henry Crick watches, amazed. So amazed that he forgets that, by tradition, will-o’-the-wisps are bad signs. He does not doubt his eyes. But so as not to doubt his memory, he records this vision. He writes it down – one more item to add to the list of wonders he has known – in the back of his lock-keeper’s log-book: ‘September 26th, 1922 (evening). Saw willythewisp.’

  It was that same day, September 26th, 1922, that the black chest with the brass fittings and the gold initials arrived at the lock cottage and that Henry Crick, on his wife’s instructions (he asked no questions – happy men don’t ask questions), lugged it up to the attic.

  And some time before this Ernest must have explained to Helen what was inside the chest and what was its purpose. He must have explained that though, as she had affirmed, it was up to his daughter whether to tell his future son (Helen, perhaps, did not interject the words ‘or daughter’, or even the word ‘grandson’) the truth of his parentage, to keep a man – let alone a saviour of the world – in the dark about such things was no light deception; and he wished to make arrangements for the eventual disclosure. In his old chest – the chest that had once accompanied him as a young man on his sojourns in London – he would place a written statement addressed to this yet unborn child, explaining how it came to be. Together with this, he would place his journals, written over the years, so that – if such matters should be of value to a saviour of the world – the child might come to know more fully about the father who begot him. He would send her the chest and the key; and on his eighteenth birthday – if she chose – she was to give the key to their son.

  Perhaps Helen might have said, ‘But by then you will still—’, but checked herself, knowing that she was looking at a sick man. Perhaps she said instead, ‘But why the chest?’, meaning that the chest was large. To which Ernest might have replied, with even the suggestion of a wink, ‘On his eighteenth birthday our son will receive also a dozen bottles of our old ale. You remember – the ale we used to brew together …’

  And perhaps it was then that he said goodbye to her – not as a father but as a lover. For they could never meet again, alone together, here in the Lodge – could they? And perhaps as Helen left to return to the lock-cottage, she wept. Because the child in her womb – so she believed then – was Henry’s.

  On the night of the twenty-fifth of September Ernest penned a document to his putative son, sending him a father’s love and greetings, a father’s confession – a father’s penitence – and enjoining him to save the world, which was a place in dire need of saving. Possibly he knew, as he wrote this, that he was mad – because inside every madman sits a little sane man saying ‘You’re mad, you’re mad.’ But perhaps this made no difference, because by now he was already confirmed in the belief that this world which we like to believe is sane and real is, in truth, absurd and fantastic.

  When he had finished this letter to his saviour-son, he folded it in an envelope, unsealed (so that Helen could read it), and placed it with the four blue cloth-bound notebooks which contained his journals in the black chest. Then he went down to the cellar of the Lodge and brought back in stages twelve bottles of the beer which when brewed and sold for public consumption in 1911 had been known as Coronation Ale. These, too, he placed, carefully swathed in sacking, in the chest. Either it had already been written or else it was at this point that he added to the letter the words:

  ‘P.S. The bottles are for emergencies.’

  Then he wrote on the envelope, ‘To the First-Born of Mrs Henry Crick’, wrapped the envelope and journals in more sacking, shut the chest, locked it and the next morning had it dispatched to his daughter’s home along with a sealed packet containing the key.

  How many bottles there were in the Lodge cellar is not known. But there must have been a good deal more than twelve. Because after my grandfather watched the chest depart in the back of the taxi, he felt a great vacuum inside him and he started to fill it with beer. He started to pour into this vacuum, in quantities he had never before attempted, that extraordinary and visionary liquor which only those who know how to drink it, should drink – which only a Saviour of the World knows truly how to drink.

  He drank all morning: at the Atkinson Lock Mrs Henry Crick receives a chest and – inside a small packet which also contained a key – a simple message which read: ‘Call him Richard.’

  He drank all afternoon: at the Atkinson Lock, Henry Crick, experiencing twinges in the knee, heaves the chest up to the attic.

  He drank, with intervals, perhaps all day. But then at some time in the evening, leaving behind him a litter of empty beer bottles, he began to walk from the Lodge towards the Kessling Home, following the leafy paths that once his daughter had followed on her daily journeys as a nurse. Perhaps he believed that it was there he truly belonged, with the poor soldiers, who would never get out of the past, who would never climb up into the future – while his daughter belonged with the one who’d been freed. Perhaps he was looking to take Henry Crick’s place among the crazy soldiers, and maybe that was why he carried a gun.

  At any rate, he never reached the Home. Because on the same September evening that my father saw a will-o’-the-wisp come twinkling down the Leem, Ernest Atkinson, whose great-grandfather brought the magic barley out of Norfolk, sat down with his back against a tree, put the muzzle of a loaded shot-gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  31

  A Teacher’s Testament

  CHILDREN, do you believe in education? Do you believe that the world grows up and learns? Do you believe in all this stuff about wise old men and young foolish ones? In elders and betters, in following your leader, in the lessons of experience …?

  Do you believe in children? That they come trailing clouds of glory, that they bring with them little parcels of paradise, that locked in their bosoms is a glimpse of what the world might just one day be?

  What is a history teacher? He’s someone who teaches mistakes. While others say, Here’s how to do it, he says, And here’s what goes wrong. While others tell you, This is the way, this is the path, he says, And here are a few bungles, botches, blunders and fiascos … It doesn’t work out; it’s human to err (so what do we need, a God to watch over us and forgive us our sins?). He’s a self-contradiction (since everyone knows that what you learn from history is that nobody—). An obstructive instructor, a treacherous tutor. Maybe he’s a bad influence. Maybe he’s not good to have around …

  Darkness. A school playground. Darkness in the classrooms, in the assembly hall, in the science block, the gym, the library. Only a single light still burns in the office wing.

  A teacher walks, with unsteady gait, across the playground. The teacher is a little drunk. The teacher won’t be teaching any more. He’s in no fit state for that. The teacher’s been to see the
Head. He loiters in the kids’ playground, under veiled suburban stars …

  Children, some brief observations on drunkenness (made whilst in a state of drunkenness). A predominantly adult phenomenon. The very young, by and large, don’t. Don’t have to. Because children don’t need to feel they are once again like children … How it makes the world seem like a toy. How it makes the bad seem not so bad. How it makes reality seem not so really real … Its sociological and ideological implications. A let-out for the march of history (Look – we can still be merry!). A subject for eclectic research (perhaps you’d like to pursue it some time?): the French wine and champagne industry during the French Revolution. Consumption up or down?

  ‘Sir?’

  It’s Price. His pale, questioning face looms up like a haggard moon in the dark.

  ‘Price, what are you doing still here?’

  ‘Meeting, sir.’

  ‘What meeting?’

  ‘Our society. The Holocaust Club – the Anti-Armageddon League. We haven’t decided on a name yet.’

  ‘Just as well. Are you supposed to hold these meetings? If Lewis—’

  ‘It’s all right. We booked a room in the name of the chess club.’

  He falls into step beside me.

  ‘You’ve seen him then, sir?’

  ‘Seen him?’

  Price nods towards that floating square of light.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Everyone knew.’