Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

  “The bed had been slept in, though?”

  The noise of his words reached her. Dazed, she seemed to come to herself, and nodded. In a voice that was her own again, though weak with exhaustion, she said, “Ruby put her to bed. Our nursery maid.”

  Then she had lapsed into silence and he had taken over the narrative.

  “Slow down, sir, if you don’t mind,” the fellow had said as he bent over his notebook, pencil in hand, copying it all down like a zealous schoolboy. “Start that bit again, would you?” Every so often he stopped them, read back what he had down, and they corrected him, remembered details they had left out, discovered discrepancies in what he knew and what she knew, compared notes to get it right. Any detail might be the one to bring her back. Hours, it had taken, to get down the events of a few minutes.

  He had written to his father in New Zealand.

  “No, don’t,” Helena had protested. “What’s the point in upsetting him when she’ll be home tomorrow, or the day after?”

  But he wrote the letter. He remembered the account they had given to the man from the police and based his explanation on that. He wrote it out carefully. The letter contained all the facts of the disappearance. Unknown villains came in the night, the letter said; they put up a ladder and entered the house by the nursery window; they left, taking the child with them. New paragraph: Though a ransom demand was received early the following morning and the ransom was paid, our daughter has not been returned to us. We are looking. Everyone is doing their utmost and we will not rest until she is found. The police are pursuing the river gypsies and will search their boats. I shall send further news as soon as there is some.

  There was none of the breathlessness. No painful gasps for breath. The horror of it was quite excised. At his desk, less than forty-eight hours after it had happened, he had made his account: the letters arranged themselves into words, regularly aligned, to make sentences and then paragraphs in which the loss of his daughter was contained. In two informative pages it was done.

  When Anthony Vaughan finished the letter, he read it through. Did it say everything that needed to be said? It said everything that could be said. When he was satisfied that it could say no more, he sealed it and rang for the maid, who took it for the post.

  That brief and dry account, which he had reused countless times for the benefit of his business associates and other semi-strangers, was the one he brought out now. Though he had not used it for months, he found that he still had it word for word. It took less than a minute to lay the matter before the woman with the grey eyes.

  He came to the end of the story and took a mouthful of water from the glass. It had the unexpected and very refreshing taste of cucumber.

  Mrs. Constantine looked at him with her unwavering, kind look. Something seemed suddenly wrong to him. There was usually stunned shock, a clumsy attempt to console, to say the right thing, or else embarrassed silence that he filled with some remark to redirect the conversation. None of this happened.

  “I see,” she said. And then—nodding, as if she really did see, but what was there to see? Nothing, surely—“Yes. And what about your wife?”

  “My wife?”

  “When you first arrived, you told me you had come to seek my help about your wife.”

  “Ah. So I did.”

  He felt that he needed to trace a long path back to arriving at the house, that first exchange of words with Mrs. Constantine, though it could not have been much more than a quarter of an hour ago. He worked backwards through various obstacles of time and memory, rubbing his eyes, and found what it was he was here for.

  “It’s like this, you see. My wife is, quite naturally, inconsolable. Understandable in the circumstances. She thinks of nothing except the child’s return. Her state of mind is lamentable. She will see no one. She permits no diversion from her distress. Her appetite is poor and in her sleep she is pursued by the most appalling nightmares, so she prefers to stay awake. Her behavior has grown more and more strange to the point where she is now a danger to herself. To give you just one example: she has taken to going out on the river in a rowing boat, quite alone and without any thought to her comfort and safety. She stays out for hours, in all weathers, in garments that offer her no protection at all. She cannot say why she does it, and it can do no good at all. It can only harm her. I have suggested taking her away, thinking that travel might restore her. I am even ready to sell up, lock, stock, and barrel, and start again in some entirely new place, untainted by our sorrow.”

  “And her response?”

  “She says it is a very good idea, and when the child comes home, that is exactly what we will do. Do you see? If nothing changes, I foresee only that she shall go from bad to worse. It is not grief that afflicts her, you must realize, but something far worse. I fear for her. I fear that, with no change, her life will end in some awful accident or else in an asylum, and I would do anything—anything at all—to prevent that.”

  The grey eyes remained upon him, and he was aware of all the observation going on behind the kindness. When it was clear that he was not going to say any more and that it was her turn to speak—had he ever met a woman who said so little?—she opened her mouth at last. “That must be very lonely for you,” she said.

  Anthony Vaughan could barely conceal his disappointment. “That is beside the point. What I want you to do is to talk to her.”

  “To what end?”

  “Tell her that the child is dead. I believe it is what she needs.”

  Mrs. Constantine blinked twice. In another woman this would be almost nothing, but in a woman of her unperturbability, this counted as surprise.

  “Let me explain.”

  “I think you had better.”

  “I want you to tell my wife that our daughter is dead. Tell her that the child is happy. Tell her she is with angels. Do messages, voices. Do the thing with the smoke and mirrors, if you are set up for it.” He glanced around the room again as he said this. It seemed unlikely that this decorous drawing room could double for service with the contraptions and curtains that he supposed were necessary for such performances, but perhaps it was another room she used for it. “Look, I’m not presuming to tell you your own business. You know what works. I can tell you things that will make Helena believe it. Things only she and I would know. And then . . .”

  “Then?”

  “Then we can be sad and sorry and weep and say our prayers and then—”

  “And then, when your wife has mourned, she will find her way back to life—to you—again?”

  “Exactly!”Anthony Vaughan was full of gratitude at having been so perfectly understood.

  Mrs. Constantine tipped her head very slightly to one side. She smiled at him. Kindly. With understanding. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said.

  Anthony Vaughan started. “Whyever not?”

  She shook her head. “For one thing, you have misunderstood—or been misled perhaps—about what it is that happens here. It is an understandable mistake. Furthermore, what you suggest would do no good.”

  “I will pay you the going rate. I will pay you double if you ask it.”

  “It is not a question of money.”

  “I don’t understand! It is a simple enough transaction! Tell me how much you want and I will pay it!”

  “I am profoundly sorry for your suffering, Mr. Vaughan. To lose a child is one of the hardest burdens a human being can bear.” She frowned faintly. “But what about you, Mr. Vaughan? Do you believe your daughter to be dead?”

  “She must be,” he said.

  The grey eyes looked at him. The impression suddenly struck him that she could see right into his soul—that she could see aspects of his being that were in darkness even to him. He felt his heart start to beat uncomfortably.

  “You didn’t tell me her name.”

  “Helena.”

  “Not your wife’s name. Your daughter’s.”

  Amelia. The name rose in him and he choked it do
wn. There was a spasm in Vaughan’s chest. He coughed, gasped, reached for the water, and drank half the glass of it. He took an experimental breath to see if his chest was free.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why won’t you help me?”

  “I would like to help you. You are in need of help. You cannot go on much longer like this. But what you have asked me today, besides being impossible, would do no good.”

  He got to his feet, made an exasperated gesture with his arm. For a ridiculous moment he wondered whether he was about to raise his palms to his eyes and weep. He shook his head.

  “I’ll go, then.”

  She rose too. “If you ever wish to come back, please do. You will be welcome.”

  “Why should I come back? You can do nothing for me. You have made that perfectly plain.”

  “That’s not quite what I said. Do refresh yourself if you would like. There is water and a clean towel on the side there.”

  When she had gone, he splashed water onto his face, buried his face in the soft cotton towel, and felt marginally better for it. He took out his watch. There was a train on the half hour and he had just time to be on it.

  On the platform a number of other passengers were waiting for the train. Anthony Vaughan stood a little away from them. He did not like to be spotted. Small talk with people you were only distantly acquainted with was something he avoided where he could do so, and the curiosity of strangers, who sometimes knew his face when he did not know theirs, was even worse.

  According to the station clock, the train would be approaching in a minute or two, and while he waited, he chided himself for his foolishness. He had had, he told himself, a narrow escape. Suppose the woman had jumped at his idea? Suppose he had taken Helena there and word had got out? It might have done something for the wife of the man in the story, but Helena . . . Helena was not like other men’s wives.

  He was so absorbed in thoughts of his recent encounter that it took a little while for him to become aware of the sensation that tugged quietly at his mind. Then he did notice it but was still so befuddled by the strangeness of the house at number 17, it took a moment to separate this new feeling from the oddness of a little while ago. When he did, he recognized it: anticipation. He shook his head to dispel his weariness. It had been a long day. He was waiting for a train and the train was about to come. That was all.

  The train arrived; he mounted, found an empty first-class carriage, and sat by the window. The sense of expectation that had begun on the platform was reluctant to fade. In fact, as the train left Oxford and he looked through the darkening mistiness towards the place where the river flowed invisibly, the presentiment increased. The rhythm of the train on the tracks suggested words to his overtired brain and he heard them as clearly as if an unseen person had pronounced them: Something is going to happen.

  Lily’s Nightmare

  On the other side of the river from the Vaughans’ grand house and half a mile downstream, there was a patch of land which was too wet even for watercress. Set back from the river, three oak trees grew, and their roots drank thirstily from the wet soil, but any acorn that fell on the river side of its parent rotted before it could germinate. It was a godforsaken place, good only for drowning dogs, but the river must have been more biddable in the past, because at one time somebody had built a cottage there, between the oaks and the water.

  The little dwelling was a squat box of lichened stone containing two rooms, two windows, and a door. There was no bedroom, but, in the kitchen, steps led up to a platform just wide enough for a straw mattress. At one end this sleeping ledge adjoined the chimney, so if the fire had been lit, the sleeper’s head or feet might be warm for the first hours of the night. It was an impoverished place and was empty as often as it was tenanted, for it was so cold and damp that only the desperate were willing to inhabit it. It was almost too small to have a name, so it comes as a surprise to learn that in fact it had two. Officially it was called Marsh Cottage, but it had been known for as long as anyone could remember as Basketman’s Cottage. A long time ago the basket man had been a tenant there for a dozen years or thirty, depending on who you talked to. He collected reeds all summer long and made baskets all winter, and everybody in that day who needed a basket bought it from him, for his goods were well-made and he did not ask too much for them. He had no children to disappoint him, no wife to nag him, and no other woman to break his heart. He was quiet without being morose, said good morning very pleasantly to all, and quarreled with no one. He lived without debts. He had no sins anyone knew of or could guess at. One morning he walked into the river, his pockets full of stones. When his body knocked into one of the barges waiting to be loaded at the wharf, they went to his cottage and found potatoes in a stone jar and cheese on the side. There was cider in a flagon and on the mantelpiece was a tobacco tin, half-full. There was consternation at his demise. He had work, food, and pleasure: What more could a man want? It was a mystery, and overnight Marsh Cottage became Basketman’s Cottage.

  Since the time of the basket man the river had undercut the bank by washing away layers of gravel. This created dangerous overhangs that looked solid but would not hold a man’s weight. When they collapsed, all that was left to contain the river was a shallow slope where the frail roots of loosestrife, meadowsweet, and willow herb attempted to knit the soil together and were washed away with every high water. At equinoxes and after heavy rain, and after moderate rain that followed baking sun, and in times of snowmelt, and at other times for no reason other than the random malice of nature, the river flooded onto this shallow slope. Halfway up this slope someone had driven a post into the ground. Though it was silvered by time and cracked by repeated submersion, the carved lines that marked the water level were visible still, and you could make out dates that told you when the flooding took place. The flood marks were numerous at the bottom of the post, and almost as numerous in the middle and in the upper section. Further up the slope a second post had sprouted, more recently. Evidently there had been floods that had entirely swallowed up the first post. This newer one had two lines in it, from eight years ago and five.

  Today a woman stood next to the lower post, looking at the river. She clutched her coat to her with gloveless hands that were chapped and red with cold. Strands of hair had worked loose from her too-few hairpins and hung about her face, moving with the breeze. They were so fair that the silver that had started to appear in it was almost invisible. If her hair was younger than her forty-odd years, the same could not be said of her face. Trouble had marked her, and permanent creases of anxiety were scored into her forehead.

  The river was a good yard from the post. There would be no flood today, nor tomorrow either, yet still her eyes were fearful. The water, bright and cold and fast-running, hissed as it passed. At irregular intervals it spat; when a spot of river water landed near her boot, she jumped and edged back a few inches.

  As she stood there she remembered the story of the basket man and shuddered at his bravery, walking into the river like that with his pockets full of stones. She thought of the dead souls that live in the river and wondered which ones were racing past her now, spitting at her. She thought—again—that she would ask the parson one day about the dead souls in the river. It wasn’t in the Bible—at least, not so far as she knew—but that didn’t mean anything. There must be a great many true things that weren’t in the Bible. It was a big book, but still, it couldn’t have every true thing in it, could it?

  She turned and walked up the slope towards the cottage. The working day was no shorter in winter than in summer, and by the time she got home it was almost dark. She still had to see to the animals.

  Lily had come to live in the cottage four years ago. She had introduced herself as Mrs. White, a widow, and was thought at first to be slippery because she gave evasive answers to any question that touched on her past life and nervously rebuffed all friendly interest. But she appeared at church every Sunday without fail and counted out the coins from her scant purse f
or every modest purchase without once asking for credit, and over time their suspicion faded. It wasn’t long before she started work at the parsonage, first doing the laundry and then, because she was unstinting in her efforts and quick, she gradually did more and more. Since the retirement two years ago of the parson’s housekeeper, Lily had taken on entire responsibility for the domestic comfort of the parsonage. There were two pleasant rooms at the parsonage reserved for the use of the housekeeper, but Lily continued to live in Basketman’s Cottage—because of the animals, she said. People were used to her now, but it was still held locally that there was something not quite right about Lily White. Was she really a widow? Why so nervy when anyone spoke to her unexpectedly? And what sensible woman would choose to live in damp isolation at Basketman’s Cottage when she could enjoy the wallpapered comfort of the parsonage, all for the sake of a goat and a couple of pigs? Yet familiarity and her connection with the parson worked together to reduce suspicion, and she was now regarded with something closer to pity. Excellent housekeeper she might be, but even so, it was whispered that Lily White was a bit soft in the head.

  There was some truth in what people imagined about Lily White. In law and in the eyes of God, she was no missus at all. There had been for some years a Mr. White, and she had performed for him all those duties a wife customarily performs for a husband: she had cooked his meals, scrubbed his floors, laundered his shirts, emptied his chamber pot, and warmed his bed. He in return had performed the normal duties of a husband: he kept her short of money, drank her share of the ale, stayed out all night when he felt like it, and beat her. It was like a marriage in every detail in Lily’s eyes, and so, when he had disappeared five years ago in circumstances that she tried not to think about, she had not hesitated. With all his thieving and drinking and other bad ways, White had been a better name than he’d deserved. It was a better name than she deserved too, she knew that, yet out of all the names she could have had, this was the one she most wanted. So she took it. She left that place, followed the river and come, by chance, to Buscot. Lily White, she had muttered, under her breath, all the way. I am Lily White.