Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

  But as Armstrong geed up Fleet to gallop to Radcot, the old man shook his head and pursed his lips. He had lost a week’s wages on the cockfighting last night, but still, there were others worse off than he.

  Three Claims

  The Leach and the Churn and the Coln all have their separate journeys before they join the Thames to swell its waters, and in similar fashion the Vaughans and the Armstrongs and Lily White had their own stories in the years and days before they became part of this one. But join it they did, and we now come to the meeting of the waterways.

  While the world was still smothered in darkness, someone was up and about on the riverbank: a stubby figure, clutching a coat about her, scurried in the direction of Radcot Bridge, panting steam.

  At the bridge she stopped.

  The usual place to pause on a bridge is the apex. It is so natural to pause there that most bridges—even youthful ones only a few hundred years old—are flattened at their upmost point by the feet that have lingered, loitered, wondered, and waited there. That was a thing Lily could not understand. She stopped on the bank, at the pier stone, the massive piece of rock on which the rest of the construction was founded. Engineering was a bewilderment to Lily: stones, to her mind, did not reside naturally in the air, and how a bridge stayed up was a thing she could not fathom. It might be revealed at any moment for the illusion it surely was, and then, if she happened to be upon it, she would plummet through the air, plunge into the water, and join the souls of the dead. She avoided bridges when she could, but sometimes crossing was a necessity. She balled the fabric of her skirt into two fists, took a deep breath, and launched into a heavy-footed run.

  It was Margot who woke first, roused by the banging at the door. The urgency of the hammering got her out of bed, and she pulled her dressing gown around herself as she went downstairs to see who it was. As she descended, her memories of the previous night shook off their dreamlike air and revealed themselves to her as surprising reality. She shook her head wonderingly, then opened the door.

  “Where is she?” said the woman at the door. “Is she here? I heard she was . . .”

  “It’s Mrs. White, isn’t it? From over the river?” What’s wrong here? Margot thought. “Come in, dear. What’s the matter?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Asleep, I should think. There’s no rush, is there? Let me light a candle.”

  “There is a candle just here,” came Rita’s voice. Roused by the hammering at the door, she was on her feet and in the doorway to the pilgrims’ room.

  “Who’s that?” Lily asked nervously.

  “Just me, Rita Sunday. Good morning. It’s Mrs. White, isn’t it? I think you work for Parson Habgood?”

  As the candle flickered into life, Lily looked this way and that in the room, her feet in agitated movement beneath her. “The little girl . . . ,” she began again, but uncertainty entered her expression as she looked at Margot and Rita. “I thought . . . Did I dream it? I don’t . . . Perhaps I should be going.”

  Light footsteps sounded behind Rita. It was the child, rubbing her eyes and tottering on her feet.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Lily with an entirely altered voice. “Oh!”

  Even by candlelight they saw her blanch. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stared in shock at the girl’s face.

  “Ann!” she exclaimed in a voice thick with feeling. “Forgive me, Ann! Say you forgive me, sister dear!” She got to her knees and reached a shaking hand to the child but did not dare to touch her. “You have come back! Thank heaven! Say you forgive me . . .” She gazed with urgent longing at the child, who seemed indifferent. “Ann?” she asked, and with pleading eyes waited for a response.

  None came.

  “Ann?” she whispered again, in fearful trembling.

  The child did not answer.

  Rita and Margot exchanged a look of astonishment; then, seeing that the woman was weeping, Rita placed both hands on her shaking shoulders.

  “Mrs. White,” she said soothingly.

  “What is that smell?” Lily cried out. “The river, I know it is!”

  “She was found in the river last night. We haven’t washed her hair yet—she was too poorly.”

  Lily turned her eyes back to the child and gazed at her with an expression that altered from love to horror and back again.

  “Let me go,” she whispered. “Let me get away!”

  She rose shakily but with determination and made her way out, muttering apologies as she went.

  “Well,” Margot exclaimed with gentle bafflement. “I give up trying to make sense of anything. I am going to make a cup of tea. That is the best I can do.”

  “And a very good thing too.”

  But Margot didn’t go to make the tea. At least not straightaway. She looked out of the window to where Lily was kneeling in the cold, hands clasped at her chest. “She is still there. Praying, it looks like. Praying and staring. What do you make of it?”

  Rita considered. “Can Mrs. White have a sister so young? How old would you say she was? Forty?”

  Margot nodded. “And our little girl is—four?”

  “About that.”

  Margot used her fingers to count, the way she did the inn’s bookkeeping. “Thirty-six years between them. Suppose Mrs. White’s mother had her at sixteen. Thirty-six years later she would be fifty-two.” She shook her head. “Can’t be.”

  In the pilgrims’ room Rita held the wrist of the man in the bed and counted his pulse.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “All the signs are good.”

  “And her?”

  “What about her?”

  “Will she . . . get better? Because she’s not right, is she? She hasn’t said a word.” Margot turned to the child. “What’s your name, poppet? Who are you, eh? Say hello to your auntie Margot!”

  The child gave no response.

  Margot lifted her and with maternal coaxing murmured encouragement into her ear. “Come on, my little one. A little smile? A look?” But the child remained indifferent. “Can she even hear me?”

  “I have wondered that myself.”

  “Maybe she had her wits knocked out of her in the accident?”

  “No sign of a blow to the head.”

  “Simpleminded?” Margot wondered. “Goodness knows, it’s not easy having a child who’s different.” She smoothed the child’s hair tenderly. “Have I ever told you about when Jonathan was born?” You couldn’t live at the Swan, have it in your blood for generations, and not know how to tell a story; and though she was ordinarily too busy for such things, the unusual nature of the day had jolted her out of her habits, and she stopped to tell one now.

  “Do you remember Beattie Riddell, the midwife before you came?”

  “She died before I arrived.”

  “She delivered all of mine. None of the girls were any trouble, but then there was Jonathan and—I suppose I was older—it wasn’t so easy. After a dozen girls, me and Joe were still hoping for a boy, so when at long last Beattie held him up to me, all I saw was his little John Thomas! ‘Joe’ll be pleased,’ I thought, and so was I. I reached for him, thinking she would put him in my arms, but instead she put him down on the side and gave a sort of shudder.

  “ ‘I know what to do,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs. Ockwell. It is a simple thing and cannot fail. We will get him changed back in no time, don’t you fret.’

  “That’s when I saw. Those slanting eyes of his and that funny little moon face and his ears that are so curious. He was an odd little fellow, a—a dainty creature—and I thought, ‘Is that really mine? Did that really come out of my belly? How did it get in there?’ I had never seen a baby like it. But Beattie knew what he was.”

  All the while she told, Margot was rocking the child as though she were no weight at all, like a much smaller child.

  “Let me guess,” said Rita. “A changeling?”

  Margot nodded. “Beattie went down to the kitchen to set a fire going. I
expect you know what she was going to do: put him over the fire and when he got a bit warm and started to squeal, his fairy folk would come and fetch him back and leave my stolen baby in return. She called up the stairs, ‘I shall want more kindling and a big pot.’ I heard her go out the back to the wood store.

  “I couldn’t take my eyes off him, little fairy creature that he was. He gave a little blink, and the way his eyelid—you know what it is like: not straight like yours and mine, but set at an angle—it closed over the eye not quite like a normal baby, but nearly. I thought, ‘What does he make of this strange world he’s come to? What does he make of me, his foster mother?’ He moved his arms, not altogether like my baby girls used to, but more floppy—like he was swimming. A baby frown came into his face, and I thought, ‘He will cry in a minute. He’s cold.’ Beattie hadn’t wrapped him up or anything. ‘Fairy children can’t be so very different from the ones I know,’ I thought, ‘because I can tell he’s getting cold.’ I put my fingertips against his little cheek and he was all wonder, quite astonished! When I took my finger away, his little mouth opened and he mewed like a kitten to have it back. I felt my milk rise at his cry.

  “Biddy wasn’t half-cross when she came back and found him suckling. Human milk!

  “ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s too late now.’

  “And that was that.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Rita at the end of the story. “I’ve heard the stories about changelings, but that’s all they are. Jonathan is no fairy child. Some children are just born like that. Beattie might not have seen it before, but I have. There are other children in the world just the same as Jonathan, with the same slanting eyes and large tongues and loose limbs. Some doctors call them Mongol children, because they resemble people from that part of the world.”

  Margot nodded. “He is a human child, isn’t he? I know it now. He’s mine and Joe’s. But the reason I was thinking about it now is because of this little one. She’s not like Jonathan, is she? She’s not a—what did you call it?—Mongol child? She’s different in some other way. It’s not easy raising a child who’s different. But I’ve done it. I know how to do it. So even if she can’t hear, and even if she don’t speak—” Margot clutched the child closer in her arms, took a breath, and suddenly remembered the man in the bed. “But I suppose she belongs to him.”

  “We’ll know soon enough. It won’t be long before he wakes.”

  “What is that Lily doing now, anyway? I shall have to go and fetch her in if she’s still there. It’s too cold for a body to be praying out of doors—she’ll be frozen stiff.”

  She went to the window to peer out, the child still in her arms.

  Margot felt it and Rita saw it: the child quickened. She lifted her head. Her sleepy stare was suddenly keen. She gazed one way and the other, scanning the view with lively interest.

  “What is it?” said Rita, rising urgently and crossing the room. “Is it Mrs. White?”

  “She’s gone,” Margot told her. “There’s nothing there. Only the river.”

  Rita came to stand at their side. She looked at the girl, whose stare continued as if she would drink the river dry with her eyes. “There wasn’t a bird? A swan? Something to catch her attention?”

  Margot shook her head.

  Rita sighed. “Perhaps it was the light that attracted her,” she wondered. She stood for a moment in case she should see it—whatever it was, if it was anything at all. But Margot was right. There was only the river.

  Margot dressed and roused her husband, noticed Jonathan was already up and out, and sighed—he had never been one to respect the hours of sleep and wakefulness—then set to making tea and porridge. While she was stirring the pot, there came another knock at the door. It was early for drinkers, yet after last night there were bound to be curious souls dropping in. She unlocked, a greeting on her tongue, but when she opened she took half a step back. The man in the doorway had black skin. He was a head taller than most men and powerfully built. Should she be alarmed? She opened her mouth to call for her husband, but before the words were spoken, the man took off his hat and nodded at her with grave good manners.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you so early in the day, madam.”

  Tears trembled suddenly, unavoidably, on his lashes and he raised a hand to his face to brush them away.

  “Whatever is it?” she cried, all thought of danger gone as she drew him inside. “Here. Sit down.”

  He put a thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes and pressed, then sniffed and swallowed. “Forgive me,” he said, and she was struck by the way he spoke, like a gentleman, not only in the words, but in the way he said them. “I understand a child was brought in last night. A child found drowned in the river.”

  “That is true.”

  He heaved a great breath. “I believe it might be my granddaughter. I should like to see her, if you don’t mind.”

  “She is in the other room, with her father.”

  “My son? My son is here?” His heart leapt at the thought and he leapt up with it.

  Margot was puzzled. Surely this dark man could not be the father of the man in the bed. “The nurse is with them,” she offered, though it was not an answer. “They are both rather poorly.”

  He followed her to the pilgrims’ room.

  “This is not my son,” he said. “My son is not so tall, nor so broad. He is always clean-shaven. His hair is light brown and does not curl like this.”

  “Then Mr. Daunt is not your son.”

  “My son is Mr. Armstrong. And so am I.”

  Margot spoke. “It was for the little girl that the gentleman came in. He thought she might be his grandchild.”

  Rita stood to one side, and for the first time Armstrong set eyes on the child.

  “Well!” exclaimed Armstrong uncertainly. “What a—”

  He hardly knew what to say. He had had in mind, and he realized his foolishness instantly, a brown-skinned child like his own. Of course this child would be different. She would be Robin’s child. At first disconcerted by the indistinct color of her hair and the whiteness of her skin, he was nonetheless struck by a familiarity. He could not quite place it. Her nose was not really Robin’s—unless, perhaps, it was, a little . . . And the curve of her temple . . . He tried to picture the face of the young woman he had seen dead so few hours earlier, but it was hard to compare that face with this. He might have been able to do it if he had seen the woman in life, but death so rapidly undoes a person, and the detail of her face was hard to recall in any ordinary way. Still, he fancied there was something that linked the child to the woman, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Armstrong became aware that the women were waiting for a response from him.

  “The difficulty is that I have not met my grandchild before. My son’s daughter lived at Bampton with her mother, apart from my own family. It was not ideal and it was far from what I would have wished, but it was so.”

  “Family life . . . It is not always easy,” Margot murmured charitably. After her first trepidation she discovered she had quite come round to this large, dark man.

  He gave her a half bow in gratitude. “I was alerted yesterday to a crisis in the household and discovered early this morning that the young woman who was her mother—”

  He broke off and glanced anxiously at the child. He was used to the stares of children, but this one’s eyes drifted towards him and didn’t stop but kept on going, past, past, as if she hadn’t seen him. Perhaps it was a form of shyness. Cats also did not like to meet an unfamiliar person’s eye: they looked in your direction and then away again. He kept a length of string in his pocket to which was tied a feather; it was marvelously effective with kittens. For little girls he had a small doll made of a clothes peg with a painted face and a rabbit-skin coat. He took it out now and put it in the child’s lap. She felt it placed there and looked down. Her hand closed around the doll. Rita and Margot watched her with the same attentiveness as the man and exchan
ged glances.

  “You were saying, about the poor mite’s mother . . . ,” Margot then prompted, in a low voice, and while the child was occupied with the doll, Armstrong went on in a murmur.

  “The young woman passed away yesterday evening. Nothing was known of the whereabouts of the child. I inquired of the first man I met on the towpath and he told me to apply to you here—though he had the story entirely upside down, and I arrived believing her to be drowned.”

  “She was drowned,” said Margot, “till Rita brought her in again, and then she was alive.” No matter how many times her tongue repeated it, it still sounded wrong to her ears.

  Armstrong frowned and turned to Rita for clarification. Her face gave little away. “She appeared dead but wasn’t,” she said. The briefness of the formulations elided the impossibilities better than any other, and for the moment this was her version. It was laconic, but it was true. As soon as you started to put more words in, you came to unreason.

  “I see,” said Armstrong, though he didn’t.

  The three of them looked at the girl again. The doll was lying abandoned at her side and she had returned to a state of listlessness.

  “She is a droll little thing,” Margot admitted unhappily. “Everybody finds her so. And yet, in a way that is hard to explain, you cannot help but take to her. Why, even the gravel diggers last night—and they are not known for being softhearted—were won over. Weren’t they, Rita? If nobody had claimed her, that Higgs would have taken her home like a lost puppy. And even with all the children and grandchildren I’ve got to worry about, I’d keep her if she had nowhere else to go. And so would you, wouldn’t you, Rita?”

  Rita did not reply.

  “We did think he was the father, the man who brought her in,” Margot said. “But from what you say . . .”

  “How is he? This Mr. Daunt.”

  “He will be all right. His injuries look worse than they are. His breathing does not falter, and his color improves with every hour that passes. I think it will not be many hours before he awakes.”