Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

  “Is it your little girl?” said the newcomer.

  A child whose eyes were the color of the Thames and as inexpressive.

  Yes, said his leaping heart. Yes. Yes.

  “No,” he said.

  A Tragic Tale

  All through the hours of daylight the drinkers had been discussing events at the Swan. Everybody knew that Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan were in Margot and Joe’s private sitting room at the back, where they had been reunited with Amelia. Word had also got about that a rich Negro, Robert Armstrong from Kelmscott, had been there at first light and that his son was expected later. The name Robin Armstrong was broadcast.

  A curtain was drawn back in every man’s inner theater and their storytelling minds got to work. On the stage were the same four figures: Mr. Vaughan, Mrs. Vaughan, Robin Armstrong, and the girl. The scenes that played out in the many heads were full of striking melodrama. There were seething looks, dark glances, calculating squints. Words were delivered in hisses, with stern decorum and in shrill alarm. The child was snatched from party to party, like a doll among jealous children. One farmhand of a counting disposition found his mind arranging an auction of the child, while the brawlers who had temporarily deserted the Plough indulged in fantasies in which Mr. Vaughan drew a weapon from his inner pocket—revolver? dagger?—and set about Mr. Armstrong with a true father’s determination. One ingenious mind returned the power of speech to the child at the moment of highest tension: “Papa!” she called, lifting her arms to Mr. Armstrong and dashing forever the hopes of the Vaughans, who fell weeping into each other’s embrace. The role of Mrs. Vaughan in these theatricals was confined largely to weeping, which she accomplished sometimes in a chair, frequently on the floor, and ending generally in a faint. One young cressman, in a flourish he was most proud of, imagined a role for the unconscious man in the bed: coming round from his long slumber and hearing an altercation in the next room, he would rise and enter the sitting room (stage left) and there, like Solomon, declare that the child must be sliced in two and given half to the Vaughans and half to Armstrong. That would do it.

  When the last of the day had drained from the sky and it was past five o’clock and the river ran glinting in the darkness, a man rode up to the Swan inn and dismounted. The noise of the winter room was deafening, and before anyone noticed the door opening to let the man in, he had already closed it behind him. He stood for a little while, hearing his name in the general din, before anybody remarked his presence, and even when they did see him, they failed to realize he was the one they were expecting. Those who had an idea what the older Mr. Armstrong looked like—and the story was already being circulated that he was the bastard son of a prince and a slave girl—were waiting for a tall, strong, and dark-skinned fellow; no wonder they did not recognize this young man, for he was pale and slender, with light brown hair that fell into soft curls where it touched his collar. There was something of the boy still about him: his eyes so palely blue, they seemed nothing but reflection, and his skin soft like a girl’s. Margot was the first to spot him, and she was not sure whether it was her maternal or her womanly instincts that stirred at the sight of him, for whether he was youth or man, he was pleasing to the eye.

  He made his way to Margot. When he told her his name in an undertone she drew him away from the public room and into the little corridor at the back that was lit by a single candle.

  “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Armstrong. And you having lost your poor lady too. You see, since your father was here this morning—”

  He stopped her. “It’s all right. I overtook your parson on my way here. He hailed me, guessing the reason for my direction and my haste, and has—” He paused, and in the shadows of the corridor she supposed he was wiping away a tear, gathering himself to go on. “He has explained everything. It is not Alice after all. Another family has claimed her.” He lowered his head. “I thought it better to come anyway, since I was so near and you were expecting me. But now I shall take my leave. Please tell Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan I am very”— again his voice broke—“very pleased for them.”

  “Oh, but you must not go without at least taking something. A glass of ale? A hot punch? You have come a long way: Sit and rest for a while. Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan are in the sitting room and hoping to offer you their condolences . . .”

  She opened the door and ushered him in.

  Robin Armstrong entered the room with a gauche and apologetic air. Mr. Vaughan, disarmed by this, had reached out and shaken him by the hand before he realized he was going to do it.

  “I’m sorry,” both men said at the same moment, and then “Very awkward,” in chorus, so it was impossible to know which had spoken first.

  Mrs. Vaughan gathered herself before either of the two men seemed able to. “We are so sorry, Mr. Armstrong, to hear of your loss.”

  He turned to her.

  “What?” she said after a moment. “What is it?”

  He stared at the child in her lap.

  The young Mr. Armstrong wavered on his feet and sank, leaning heavily on Margot, then into the chair that Vaughan had just time to place behind him before his eyes fluttered to a close and he slumped.

  “Heavens above!” Margot exclaimed, and she dashed to fetch Rita from the sleeping photographer’s room.

  “He has had a long journey,” said Helena, as she leant in kindness over the unconscious man. “In such hope—and to find that she is not here . . . It’s the shock.”

  “Helena,” said Mr. Vaughan, a note of warning in his voice.

  “The nurse will know what to do to revive him . . .”

  “Helena.”

  “She is bound to have some cloves or sal volatile.”

  “Helena!”

  Helena turned to her husband. “What is it?”

  Her brow was clear, her eyes were transparent.

  “Dearest,” he said, and his voice shook. “Is it not possible that there is a different reason for the young man’s collapse?”

  “What reason?”

  He quailed at the innocent puzzlement in her face.

  “Suppose . . .” Words failed him, and he gestured in the direction of the child, who sat sleepily indifferent in the chair. “Suppose that after all . . .”

  The door opened and Margot hurried in, followed by Rita, who with calm assurance crouched at the side of the young man and took his wrist in one hand while she held her watch in the other.

  “He’s coming round,” Margot announced, seeing his eyelids stir. She took one of his passive hands in hers and rubbed it.

  Rita cast a sharp glance at the patient’s face. “He’ll be all right,” she agreed without intonation as she put her watch back in her pocket.

  The young man’s eyes opened. He took a couple of light, fluttering breaths and raised his palms to cover his dazed-looking eyes. When he lowered them, he was himself again.

  He found the child with his eyes.

  “Reason says she is not Alice.” He spoke haltingly. “She is your child. The parson says so. You say so. It is so.”

  Helena nodded and she blinked away tears of sympathy for the young father.

  “No doubt you are wondering why I could so easily mistake another man’s child for my own. It is nearly a year since I last saw my daughter. Presumably you do not know the circumstances in which I find myself. I owe you an explanation.

  My marriage took place in secret. When my wife’s family first learned of the attachment between us and our plans for a betrothal, they placed obstacles in our path. We were young and foolish. Neither of us understood what harm we did ourselves and our families by marrying in secret, but that is what we did. My wife ran away to live with me and our child was born less than a year later. We hoped—we trusted, even—that a grandchild would soften her parents’ resistance, but that wish was in vain and they continued as unyielding as ever. Over time my wife grew fretful for the many comforts that had accompanied her life in her earlier days. She found it hard raising a child without the benefit
of a household of servants to make life easy. I did all I could to maintain her good spirits and encourage her to trust in love, but in the end she became convinced that the only way forward was for me to move to Oxford, where I had friends in positions of influence, and try my fortune there, where if things went favorably for me I might earn more and we might in a year or two be able to lead the leisured life she hankered after. So with heavy heart I left Bampton and set up in rooms in Oxford. I was lucky. I found work and was soon earning more than I had before, and although I missed my wife and child a good deal, I tried to make myself believe it was all for the best. In her letters, which were not frequent, I got the impression that she was happier too. Whenever possible I came back to see them both, and so for six months we went on. Once, about a year ago, my work brought me unexpectedly upriver and I thought it would be a pleasant thing to surprise the two of them with an impromptu visit.” He swallowed, shifted in his chair. “I made a discovery then that altered my relationship with my wife forever. She was not alone. The person with her—the least said about him the better. The child’s way with him told me that this man was a regular in the household, an intimate of the family.

  “Harsh words were spoken and I came away.

  “A little later, and while I was still in a quandary about what to do, I received a letter from my wife in which she proposed to live with this man as husband and wife, and saying that she wished to have no more to do with me. I could have protested at this, of course. I could have insisted that she obey her vows. As things have turned out, I rather wish I had. It would have been better all round. But in my disarray I replied that, since it was what she wished, I agreed to the arrangement, and that as soon as I had earned what I needed to provide a proper home for her, I would come for Alice. I wrote that I expected this to take place before a year was out, and from that day I threw myself into my work in order to make it so.

  “I have not seen my wife since that time, but have recently undertaken the lease of a house and was making arrangements to live there with the child. I expected that one of my sisters would come and be a mother to her. This morning, on the point of realizing these plans, I received a visit from my father, who came with news of my wife’s death. He told me at the same time that Alice was missing. From others I have learned that my wife was abandoned by her lover some months ago, and that she and the child have been in need ever since. I can only presume that it was out of shame that she did not contact me.”

  Through his entire account, Robin Armstrong’s gaze was drawn persistently to the child’s face. More than once he lost the thread of his tale—had to drag his eyes away from her and concentrate to pick up where he had left off—but after a few sentences his eyes drifted back and found her again.

  He sighed heavily.

  “It is a story I would not willingly have told, for not only does it expose my poor wife’s sad folly to the wider world, but it puts me in a bad light. Do not blame her, for she was young. It was I who encouraged her to a secret marriage, I whose weakness in crisis led to her downfall, her death, and the loss of our child. It is a sad story unfit for the ears of good people like yourselves. I ought perhaps to have told it with greater delicacy. Had I had my wits about me, my story would have been less blunt in the telling, but it takes a little while for a man to gather himself after a shock. So please forgive me if I have been improperly frank, and remember I have been driven to it by the need to give you a reasonable explanation for my reaction here today.

  “It is true that on seeing your daughter today I felt as if I was face-to-face with my own beloved Alice. But it is plain that she does not know me. And though she resembles Alice—to a very striking degree—I must remind myself that I have not seen her in nearly twelve months and children are apt to change, are they not?”

  He turned to Margot.

  “No doubt you have children of your own, madam, and will be able to confirm that I am right in this?”

  Margot jumped at being addressed. She wiped away the tear that Robin’s story had put in her eye, and some confusion prevented her from giving an immediate answer.

  “I am right, am I not?” he repeated. “Little children are apt to change in a twelvemonth?”

  “Well . . . yes, I suppose they do change . . .” Margot sounded uncertain.

  Robin Armstrong rose from his chair and spoke to the Vaughans.

  “It was my grief that jumped ahead of my reason to recognize your child as my own. I apologize if I have alarmed you. I did not intend any harm.”

  He brought his fingers to his lips, stretched out a hand, and, obtaining permission from Helena with a glance, touched a gentle kiss upon the child’s cheek. His eyes filled with tears, but before they could fall, he had bowed his head to the ladies, bid them farewell, and was gone.

  In the silence that followed Robin Armstrong’s exit, Vaughan turned his back to stare out of the window. The elms’ branches were black against the charcoal sky, and his thoughts seemed tangled in the mazy treetops.

  Margot opened her mouth to speak and closed it half a dozen times, blinking in perplexity.

  Helena Vaughan drew the child close and rocked her.

  “Poor, poor man,” she said in a low voice. “We must pray that he finds his Alice again—as we have found our Amelia.”

  Rita did not stare and nor did she blink or speak. All the while Robin had been giving his account of himself, she had sat on the stool in the corner of the room, observing and listening. Now that he was gone, she continued to sit, with the air of someone doing a mildly challenging long division calculation in her head. What kind of a man is it, she was thinking, who appears to faint, and then comes round, though all the while his pulse does not falter?

  After a time she evidently arrived at the end of her reflections, for she put her thinking face away and rose to her feet.

  “I must go and see how Mr. Daunt is doing,” she said, and let herself quietly out of the room.

  The Tale of the Ferryman

  Henry Daunt slept and woke and slept again. He emerged each time a bit less bewildered, a bit more himself. It was not like the worst hangover he had ever had, but it was more akin to that than anything else he had ever experienced. He was still blinded by his own eyelids that pressed firmly to each other and against his eyeballs.

  Till he was five years old Henry Daunt had cried persistently at night. Roused by her son’s inconsolable wailing, it had taken a long time for his mother to realize his tears were not the result of fear of the dark but caused by another reason altogether. “There’s nothing to see,” he sobbed at last, heartbroken, which put an end to her misunderstanding. “Of course there’s nothing to see,” she told him. “It’s night. Night is for sleeping.” He would not be persuaded. His father had sighed. “That boy was born with his eyes open and hasn’t shut them since.” But it was he who had found the solution. “Look at the patterns on the inside of your eyelids. Pretty floating shapes, you’ll see, all different colors.” Warily, fearing a trick, Henry had closed his eyes and been entranced.

  Later he’d taught himself to conjure up visions from memory with his eyes shut and enjoy them as freely as when they were present before his daytime gaze. More freely, even. He reached an age where it was the Maidens of Destiny he conjured to entertain his nighttime hours. The underground mermaids rose out of churning water, their torsos half-concealed by rounded lines that might have been waves, or curling locks but might conceivably—if you were a boy of fourteen—not have been concealment at all but the actual curves of actual breasts. This was the image he lingered over in the dark hours. A creature with streaming hair, half woman, half river, cavorted with him, and her caresses were so intoxicating that they had the same effect on him that a real woman might. His hand curled around himself and he was solid as an oar. A few tugs were enough, he was pulled into the current, he was the current, he dissolved into bliss.

  Thinking about all this, and remembering the Maidens of Destiny, it occurred to him by a natural
progression to wonder what the nurse Rita Sunday looked like. He knew she was there, in the room. There was a chair diagonally left beyond the foot of the bed, by a window. He’d worked that much out. That was where she was now, silent, motionless, believing him to be asleep no doubt. He tried to piece together what he could to make an image of her. Her grip had been firm when she tried to draw his hands from his eyes. She was strong, then. He knew she was neither short nor tall, for when she was standing her voice came from a middle spot in the room. There was an assurance in her footsteps and movements that told him she was neither very young nor very old. Was she fair or dark? Pretty or plain? She must be plain, he thought. Otherwise she would be married, and if she were married, she would not be here nursing a strange man alone in a bedroom. She was probably reading in the chair. Or thinking. He wondered what she was thinking about. This business with the girl, in all likelihood. He would think about it too, if he only knew where to start.

  “What do you make of it all?” she asked.

  When he had got over the fleeting notion that she could read his mind, he replied, “How did you know I was awake?”

  “Your breathing pattern told me. Tell me what happened last night. Start with the accident.”

  How had it happened?

  It is a good thing to be solo on the river. There is freedom. You are neither in one place nor the other, but always on the move, in between. You escape everything and belong to no one. Daunt remembered the feeling: there was pleasure in the way his body organized itself with and against the water, with and against the air, pleasure in that quivering, precarious poise in which the river challenges and muscles respond. That is how it had been yesterday. He was lost to himself. His eyes had seen only the river, his mind wholly engaged with predicting her caprices, his limbs a machine that responded to her every motion. There was a moment of glory when body, boat, and river combined in a ballet of withholding and giving, tension and relaxation, resistance and flow . . . It was sublime—and the sublime is not to be trusted.