The Maker of Swans

by Paraic O’Donnell

  ‘A wasting disease, Miss Eliza.’

  ‘A wasting disease, yes, of course. Isn’t it unbearably sad? Poor, poor Amelia. And now Miss Avery is going to teach us French, and all the most exquisite pieces by Schubert. Do you know Schubert? Oh, but I’m forgetting – you were about to introduce yourself.’

  The boy looks away, squinting in the direction of the town. He mutters his name.

  ‘How charming and unusual,’ Eliza says. ‘And quite befitting a young hero. He dove into the freezing current, Miss Avery, just to rescue Lucy’s hat. Didn’t he, Lucy? And we never had the opportunity of thanking him.’

  The boy glances at her, at Lucy. The hat she wears now is a pale rose colour, held in place by a ribbon of cream satin. She puts her hand to her face as she speaks, to check a slip of hair that the wind has caught. It is a moment before the boy makes sense of the words.

  ‘What is it you are reading?’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘You were reading something as we approached. I expect it’s a love letter.’

  Love. Her lips part as she speaks the word, and her tongue darts for an instant beneath her teeth, glistens and recedes.

  ‘Un billet-doux,’ says Eliza with satisfaction. Miss Avery gives a brief and embarrassed smile.

  ‘It’s a poem,’ the boy says.

  ‘How perfectly romantic he is,’ Eliza says. ‘Who wrote it?’

  ‘My mother.’

  Behind her silk glove, Eliza’s face crumples with laughter. Lucy glances sternly at her. ‘May I read it?’ she asks him. ‘If it isn’t private, I mean. I should very much like to.’

  The boy uncovers the piece of notepaper, stowing his hat under his arm. He smooths it out on his palm, and for a moment he is uncertain.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to leave you in peace,’ says Lucy. ‘We must seem terribly rude.’

  ‘No, please— here, do take it. I don’t know if it’s a good poem. It seems so to me.’ He passes it to her, fumbling as her gloved fingers touch his. He takes a step backwards, looking away as she reads.

  ‘Bright star—’ Lucy hesitates, as if surprised by some intimacy in the words. ‘Would I were as steadfast as thou art.’

  ‘Keats, I believe,’ says Miss Avery with a gentle cough. ‘It is by John Keats.’

  Lucy scans the rest. Her lips move now and then as she reads. Unthinkingly, she thumbs her wrist, as if in search of her own pulse.

  ‘The moving waters at their priestlike task,’ she says aloud. ‘That is a strange thing to put, though it has a delightful sound. Are they priestlike, do you think? You must know them very well, after all.’

  The boy reflects for a moment. ‘Sometimes they are,’ he says. ‘But they’re like all kinds. That’s the way, with the river. It can be like anything.’

  Lucy considers this. ‘I expect you’re right,’ she says. ‘May I keep it, this poem? It’s so very lovely, and your mother has such a pretty hand. But, of course, if it’s precious to you—’

  ‘Please,’ the boy says. ‘Please, it’s yours.’

  ‘Well, it was very pleasant to make your acquaintance,’ Miss Avery interrupts, ‘but I do think we ought to start for home.’ She returns to the road, where she turns to see if the girls are following. Eliza links Lucy’s arm and begins to lead her away.

  ‘Goodbye, then,’ Lucy calls to him. ‘And thank you, though I really ought to thank you twice. I shall treasure your gift.’

  ‘Honestly, Lucy,’ Eliza says. ‘How very forward you are. Isn’t she, Miss Avery?’

  They take a few more steps, and Lucy turns again. ‘We shall look forward to seeing you on our next crossing,’ she says. ‘We must hope for priestlike waters.’

  Eliza puts up a parasol, so that Lucy is half in shadow. Still, for as long as she can be seen, the boy stands and watches. He worries at his wrist, in imitation of her habit, feeling for the knot of quickness, the hidden seam of heat.

  The summer brings a run of flood tides. On the third night, the boy and his father haul the boat all the way up the slip and into the ferry house. It takes them an hour and a half, all told, and will cost them the same again in the morning. Better that, his father says, than to find it has been carried out to sea trailing half the pier.

  The boy stays behind when his father leaves for home. The lines must all be retied for high water, and will need more oil in case they are lying under. If he does not finish tonight, he will sleep in the boat and rise early. His father teases him. It is some little miss from the town, he says, who is coming to oil his rope. There is some more hospitable place, surely, to bring her courting.

  The boy says nothing, and his father leaves him be. He is content, the boy thinks, to see him stay. He takes it as a sign that he is settling to the work, that he is coming to see the worth of what will pass to him. His father is seeing only what he wishes to, though the boy says nothing to contradict him.

  The work has a simplicity, it is true, a smooth grain of purpose that gives ease to his thoughts. It keeps his mind from prospects that can only taunt him. Though he finds a quietness in the ferry house that he now finds nowhere else, he makes no other use of it, whatever his father may think. He spends his nights there alone, not courting. There is no one who comes from the town. The one he wishes for will not come.

  He keeps his thoughts from her when he can, though they come to him sometimes with a force that cannot be suppressed. Against the dreams, too, he is helpless. When the dreams come, it is better that he is not in his narrow bed in the lobby. He fears what he might say while he sleeps, the secrets that might slip from him.

  He works at the lines until his arms ache. He takes a small supper of bread and mackerel, then lies awake and listens to the river. When a swell is coming, there is a change in the music of the water. The notes are deeper, and strain against each other. Its pulse is slow but unresting. His sleep, when it comes, seems shallow at first, but envelops him wholly. There is nothing then, or he does not know what comes.

  When he wakes, a little after dawn, he pulls aside his rough cover of sacking and looks down with unease at his own body. He feels strained and soiled, as if he was about some rough work even while he slept. He dresses wearily and goes out onto the slip.

  Already, the day carries the promise of heat, but for now the air is cool enough. He crouches at the edge of the water to wash. It rose again during the night, and the bank is strewn with the small things that were carried in the surge. He walks idly along the shore, lifting odd pieces of flotsam with his toe. Most of it is worthless; shreds of net and boat timbers smashed to kindling, rusted spoons and gutted purses, a ravaged and tongueless boot. He finds a silver comb that will polish up well, half hidden beneath a splayed razor shell.

  As he stands and slips the comb into his pocket, his eye is caught by something a little way ahead. From a dense stand of reeds that juts out into the river, a nap of pinkish cloth spreads out onto the sand. The boy saunters towards it to see if the fabric is serviceable. He has been taught to put such things to use, even if it is only as rags.

  He is mid-stride, nearing the reeds, when he slackens and halts, a coldness blooming beneath his ribs. Behind the rough stalks it has snagged on, the cloth is rucked over a pale spindle of flesh. It is a child’s leg, thrust oddly askew. The boy urges himself onwards, though something bitter seeps into his muscles. His movements are cramped and lurching. His father has found bodies more than once. He will not tell him that he saw this and turned away. His life is on the river now, and the river brings such things.

  The body lies almost entirely on the shore. Only the heel and ankle of one leg are still submerged. The limbs are bluish but unswollen. It was not under for long, the boy thinks. The face is concealed by the clotted tangle of the child’s hair, and by the silt that has gathered on the upstream side. He will not look, he tells himself, until he has lifted her. He will wash the filth from her and carry her to the ferry house. He will cover her for decency, and to ease the shock when they come to see her.
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  He crouches above her and braces himself. He drives his arms into the yielding muck beneath her back and lifts her free of the reeds. He walks slowly and looks straight ahead, her faint weight pressed against his chest. Her limbs are stiffening and will not lie easily across his arms. He staggers twice, his breathing coarse and urgent, but forces himself onwards. He tugs the ruined hem over her frail knees.

  He does not look, not at her face. He does not look because there is no need. He knows her small shape and her fading colours. He knows the nightgown that was made from offcuts. It is ruffed at the wrists and adorned at the hem with a simple pattern of flowers. His mother thought first of roses, but Eleanor pleaded for daisies. Daisies were always her favourite.

  Fourteen

  Whiteness.

  Only

  whiteness, all this time.

  Such a long, deep time to be. In a taken world, and all the bright things gone. To hold like this, in touchless waiting. Such a long time. Hard even to feel, lying like this. All faraway, ungathered. With the other always, quiet and coiled under. Remember it. The clutched, red thing, the careful hurt.

  Breathing small to gentle it.

  It is night, the first time.

  Dark too, the pain, while she is still. Dark rust. She knows it, all its colours. The voice of it, the scritch and split. She remembers.

  Not yet. Wait for light, for seeing. Wait.

  The snow. She sees it first, sees nothing else. Some whitened place. A spread of hushed fields, shaded oyster near the sky. The clean falling, a throng of smudges. Quiet air, and everything edgeless.

  She sees, in the morning. She begins to see.

  The room first, all that whiteness. And the bedclothes. The blankets are a sickish colour. Whey or old wheat. Bones in weather.

  She looks at her fingers, their weak stirring. At her arm, a sallow stalk in its cowl of cotton. The threads of veins, the hollows. And at her wrist, a garland of bruises. The colours tender somehow. Like sweet peas.

  Waking again, she finds changes in the room. Couldn’t miss them, in all this bareness. The blank, limewashed stones. The landscape, uncurtained. No softness anywhere, or ornament. The room as white and empty as the fields.

  Two armchairs have been set out before the vacant fireplace. A small table draped with a simple cloth. At its centre, there is a slender vase. A single rose, though even that is white. And water. Near the edge, there is a glass of water.

  She moves without thinking. Some quick urge stirs her. It is only a little. An inch or so, and only on one side. But the pain, all at once. It blazes, flares from hiding. Her arm, still beneath the covers, glows in it like an iron.

  She sinks back in it, in the flooding heat, and she can’t. It is too much. A lightness comes. A drift.

  She tries again. But not like before. Not the way she remembers: sitting up, pushing the covers aside, swinging out her legs. Rising to her feet. No thinking in it. Her limbs fluid, her body as simple as water. But not now. She can’t, can’t move like that. There are spaces in her, intervals that her intentions will not cross. Parts of her have gone dark.

  She searches herself, for the untouched places. Slowly, gently. She maps herself, in small throbs. In flickers. She finds other ways. Threads the maze.

  She must turn first, so that she is face down. This will be easiest. She can rest again, afterwards. If it is dreadful, the pain, she can lie still. A reward. But it is slow, so slow. She guards her useless arm, and can’t roll the way she wants. She levers herself instead, pries herself onto her side. She cradles the injury, letting her weight take her over.

  She is not face down, when it is done, but wedged against the wall. She has kept her right arm shielded, but must work it now from under her. She is careful, shunting first her hips and then her shoulders, but she is too weak. She feels it happening. And the pain again, the completeness of it. The blunt incandescence, trapped beneath her. Everything else gone.

  She lies still at the edge of the bed. She is afraid now, afraid to move. When it passes, the agony, she will sleep. The thirst will be worse, when she wakes again, but she will wait. She will sleep again, keep sleeping. Until it stops.

  But it is not sleep that comes, only a fading. The greyness again, like spent weather. She watches the wall, the changes in the light. Dreams come to her, or half-dreams. Shapes tread the air, pale as watermarks. A whispering quickens to noise. She lets the day darken, thinks of nothing. And it fades, the pain. Slowly, just enough.

  She moves, the tiniest increment, then stops. She pants in fear, waiting for new pain. But nothing comes, nothing yet. She starts again, pivots on her hips; a fraction, not even an inch. Still nothing. Again, and stop. Again. She reaches the edge of the bed. She tries to be careful, to ease one leg over first, but feels them both slide. Like a foal, veiled and helpless, spilling from a mare. She almost laughs.

  She waits again, feels pins and needles. A swarm of stray heat. She tests the muscles in patient sequence. She tenses, flexes. Hardens them against the numbness. She works her left hand under her chest and spreads her fingers. Carefully, in small and graded urges. She pushes herself up.

  It surprises her, at first. The ease of it. She judged it rightly. Her weight is square above the floor. She strains outwards, keeps the pressure small. Attends to her momentum. Not too much, or it will carry her too far. She will come back too hard. Down on the arm. She cannot think of it, of the pain.

  She does it by eighths, by sixteenths. The slightest nudges. Until she stands, upright at last. Draws her left hand from the bed. Delicately, rocking slightly on her feet. Finding the centre, the equilibrium. She waits for it, waits to be sure, still trying her weight. She turns then, towards the room. Takes a shuddering step.

  And does not lurch, does not fall.

  She takes a breath. Sways slightly, snakes her arm out. Waits for balance. Another step then. And another. She reaches the end of the bed, lets herself pause. The glass is there still, on the table by the vase. It was not a mirage, something dreamed by her thirst.

  Gently, so gently. Like urging a paper boat across a pond. She pushes herself, outwards and away, steps forward. It is wonderful, for a moment. Just to stand free, to move.

  For a moment, then she feels it going. She is unstrung, slackening to dissonance. Her body is distant, a long ago faintness. Where there was heat once, was starlight.

  Her head is slam the dark taste.

  Nothing nothing nothing.

  She feels him in the room even before she is fully awake. He has been close to her in darkness before, next to her without her knowing, but that can no longer happen. He was the beginning of this. In the dragon’s mouth, in the dark. He was the splintering, the red cataract of pain. He was the rope.

  Clara opens her eyes. She is in the bed again, lying on her back. There are pillows beneath her, raising her slightly. Her right arm has been dressed with bandages and bound in a sling. The pain has dimmed to a dormant ache. Her throat feels abraded and tender, but the thirst has eased.

  He was this too. He did all this. He bound her arm while she slept. He made her drink somehow, gave her something. She wants to retch herself clean. She wants to stitch her lips closed.

  ‘Little one,’ he says. ‘You seem always to find a way to come to harm.’

  He has arranged himself in one of the armchairs by the fireplace. A fire has been lit, and its glow touches the edges of his dark clothes. She turns her face to the wall.

  ‘Dr Chastern was most concerned,’ Nazaire says. ‘We have done what we could to make you comfortable while you slept. You will find, I hope, that the pain is less. If it returns, you must let me know. I will give you something for it.’

  Clara does not move. She stares at the whitewashed stones. She tries to think of nothing.

  ‘You are distrustful still,’ he continues. ‘It is forgivable. I regret that such force was needed, but I assure you that I did only what was necessary. We are not such monsters, little one. You will see that, now that
you are to be our guest. You will be offered every kindness. In return, we ask only that you too behave with civility, and that you observe certain rules.’

  She tries to lie perfectly still, to give no sign that she has heard. But his voice. She cannot keep it out, cannot stay empty. She is there again, on the back seat. Eustace runs at the car, his face gone white and hard. And John. John Crouch on the ground, bending to touch where he is undone, where he is spilling.

  ‘In time,’ Nazaire says. ‘In time you will come to forget. And there will be time, you know. You will be with us for some time.’

  There is a soft scrape as he rises from his chair. Clara watches the quick seep of his shadow as he crosses to her bedside. His footsteps are purposeful, unhurried. She hears him set something down.

  ‘We brought a nightstand,’ he says, ‘so that you may keep things within your reach while your strength returns. There is water now.’

  The footsteps retreat again. He does not return to his chair, but continues towards the door. He stops for a moment. Clara takes slow and shallow breaths. When Nazaire speaks again, it is in his softest voice. She feels it against her nape, like the wings of a moth.

  ‘No more accidents, little one,’ he says.

  The snow has stopped falling, though it lies heavily on the ground. Now that she is raised a little in the bed, Clara has a better view. It is high country, a whitened moorland massed under a hushed sky. A march of dark pines crosses one flank, but the higher ground is otherwise sombre and featureless. On the lower slopes, if she strains her neck a little, Clara can see blanketed fields, the shadowy knit of crouching hedgerows. No roads are visible from where she lies. She sees no sign of dwellings, of other living souls.

  The water glass at her bedside is replaced while she sleeps. Clara drains it, though it repulses her to take anything he has touched. There is sugar in the water, she thinks, something that is meant to restore her strength. She wakes for longer now, for hours at a time. She watches a pair of buzzards, scoring the vacant air in long, clean arcs. She begins to feel hungry.