Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

  A Mother’s Eyes

  Something happens and then something else happens and then all sorts of other things happen, expected and unexpected, unusual and ordinary. One of the ordinary things that happened as a result of the events at the Swan that night was that Rita came to be the friend of Mrs. Vaughan. It began when she heard a knock at her door and found Mr. Vaughan on the doorstep.

  “I wanted to thank you for everything you did that night. If it weren’t for you and your excellent care—well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.” He placed an envelope on the table—“A token of our thanks!”—and asked her to come to Buscot Lodge to check the child’s health again. “We took her to the doctor in Oxford. He told us she is none the worse for her ordeal, but still, a weekly examination will do no harm, eh? That’s what my wife wants too—it will be good for our peace of mind if nothing else.”

  Rita fixed a day and time with him and, when he had gone, opened the envelope. It contained a generous payment, large enough to reflect the Vaughans’ wealth and the significance of their daughter’s life, and small enough not to be embarrassing. It was just right.

  The agreed day for Rita’s visit to Buscot Lodge was one of blustery rain that excited the surface of the river, turning it into an ever-changing ribbon of pattern and texture. She arrived at the house and was shown into a pleasant drawing room: the yellow wallpaper was bright, comfortable armchairs were arranged agreeably around a welcoming fire, and a large bay window overlooked the garden. On the hearthrug, Mrs. Vaughan was lying on her stomach, turning the pages of a book for the child. She rolled over and sprang up in a single agile movement and took both Rita’s hands in hers.

  “How can we thank you? The doctor in Oxford asked all the same questions as you did and carried out all the same tests. I said to my husband, ‘You know what that tells us, don’t you? Rita is as good as any doctor! We must have her come once a week and check that all is as it should be.’ And here you are!”

  “It is natural after everything that has happened that you don’t want to take any chances.”

  Helena Vaughan had never had a female friend in her adult life. Her limited exposure to the company of adult women in drawing rooms had entirely failed to convince her it was a thing to be relished. Decorum and the subdued manners of a lady were lost on the girl who grew up in a boatyard, and that is why Mr. Vaughan had been so taken with her: in her exuberance and robust enjoyment of outdoor life, she reminded him of the girls he had grown up with in the mining territory of New Zealand. But in Rita, Helena recognized a woman who had a purpose beyond the drawing room. There were a dozen years between them and much else to make them different, yet Helena felt inclined to like Rita, and the inclination was mutual.

  The little girl, who looked rather different now in her blue dress with its white collar and her blue-and-white embroidered shoes, had looked up expectantly on hearing the door open. There was a flare of interest in her curious eyes that faded on seeing Rita, and she returned her attention to the pages. “You carry on looking at the book together,” Rita said, “and I’ll check her pulse while she’s distracted. Not that I really need to—it’s so obvious she is healthy.”

  That was true. The girl’s hair was now gleaming. She had a faint but distinct rosy glow to her cheeks. Her limbs were sturdy and her movements purposeful and deft. She lay on her stomach, like Mrs. Vaughan, propped up on her elbows, and her feet in their embroidered indoor shoes swayed in a crisscross motion in the air above her bent knees. Without a word, but with every air of understanding, she looked at the pages as Mrs. Vaughan guided her attention to this and that in the pictures.

  From the nearest armchair Rita leant to take hold of the child’s wrist. The girl glanced up in surprise, then returned her attention to the book. The child’s skin was warm to the touch and her pulse was firm. Rita’s mind was occupied with counting the beats and eyeing the hands of her watch as they ticked around the face, but its undercurrents stirred with the memory of falling asleep in the armchair at the Swan with the little girl on her lap.

  “Everything entirely as it should be,” she said, and let the warm wrist go.

  “Don’t leave yet,” Helena asked. “Cook will be bringing us eggs and toast in a minute. Can’t you stay?”

  Over breakfast they continued to talk about the child and her health. “Your husband told me she has not spoken?”

  “Not yet.” Mrs. Vaughan did not sound concerned. “The Oxford doctor said her voice will come back. It might take six months, but she will talk again.”

  Rita knew better than most that doctors can be reluctant to admit it when they do not have the answer to a question. If no good answer presents itself, some will sooner give a bad answer than no answer at all. She did not tell Mrs. Vaughan this.

  “Would you say Amelia’s speech was normal before?”

  “Oh, yes. She babbled the way two-year-olds do. Other people didn’t always understand, but we did, didn’t we, Amelia?”

  Helena’s eyes were drawn constantly to the child, and every word she spoke, whatever the subject, came out of a smiling mouth, for it seemed the mere sight of the girl was enough to make her happy. She cut the child’s toast into soldiers and encouraged her to dip them into the egg yolk. The girl set about eating with grave attention. When the yolk was gone, Helena placed the spoon in her hand for the white and the child dabbed it ham-fistedly into the eggshell. Helena watched the girl with contented absorption, and whenever she turned to Rita, the same smile played around her mouth. The happiness that had come with the girl was one she shared profligately, but when Rita felt the radiant smile alight on her, its touch filled her with misgivings. Ordinarily it would have been a joy to see a young woman so happy, especially after lengthy sorrow, but Rita could not help feeling fearful. She had no desire to puncture Helena’s joy, but duty bound her to remind Helena that there was a degree of precariousness in the situation.

  “What of Mr. Armstrong and his missing child? Is there any news?”

  “Poor Mr. Armstrong.” Helena’s pretty face fell into a frown. “I feel for him. There is no news, none at all.” She sighed, in a way that made plain how heartfelt her sympathy was, yet at the same time it seemed to Rita that she made no connection between Mr. Armstrong’s pain and her own joy. “Do you think a father feels it as a mother does? The loss, I mean? And the not knowing?”

  “It depends on the father, I should think. And the mother.”

  “I expect you’re right. My father would have been devastated to lose me. And Mr. Armstrong seemed a very—” She stopped and thought. “A very feeling sort of man. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Rita remembered the pulse reading. “It’s hard to tell on a first meeting. Perhaps none of us were entirely ourselves. Have you seen anything of him?”

  “He came for another visit. To see her again, with a more settled mind.”

  There was a note of something unresolved in her voice.

  “And did it work? Was he able to reach a conclusion?”

  “I can’t say that he did,” Helena answered thoughtfully, and then she flashed a sudden look at Rita and leant to speak in an undertone: “They say his wife drowned the child, you know. And then took poison. That is what they are saying.” She sighed heavily. “They will find the body. That’s what I tell Anthony—that they are bound to find it and Mr. Armstrong will be certain then.”

  “It’s been quite a while. Do you think they are likely to find her now?”

  “They must. Until they do, the poor man will be in a sort of limbo. It’s hardly likely she’ll be found alive now, after all. How many weeks is it? Four?” She totted up the days on her fingers like a child. “Nearly five. You’d think they’d have found something . . . My own idea—shall I tell you?”

  Rita nodded.

  “My idea is that he cannot bear the knowledge that Alice is drowned, and so he clings to the notion that Amelia might be Alice to spare himself the agony. Oh, the poor man.”

  “And you have not seen
him since that visit?”

  “We have seen him twice more. He returned ten days later and again ten days after that.”

  Rita waited expectantly, and as she had hoped, Helena went on.

  “It was unexpected, and it was just not possible to turn him away. I mean, how could we? He came in again and took a glass of port with Anthony and we talked about one thing and another, nothing much, and he didn’t mention Amelia; but when she came in, he couldn’t take his eyes off her . . . But he didn’t say that is why he came. He arrived as if he just happened to be passing, and as we were acquainted . . . what could we do but invite him in?”

  “I see . . .”

  “And so now, I suppose, we are acquainted, and—well, that is just how it is.”

  “And he doesn’t talk about Amelia? Or Alice?”

  “He talks about farming and horses and the weather. It drives Anthony to distraction—he cannot bear small talk—yet what can we do? We can hardly turn him away when he is in such low spirits.”

  Rita wondered. “It seems a bit strange to me.”

  “It is all a bit strange,” Helena agreed, and with that, her smile returned and she turned again to the girl and wiped marmalade from her mouth. “What next?” she asked. “A walk?”

  “I ought to go home—if anybody should be ill and come for me . . .”

  “Then we will walk you part of the way. It’s along the river, and we like the river, don’t we, Amelia?”

  At the mention of the river, the child, who had sat lax in her chair since finishing her food, her eyes dreamy and far away, was filled with purpose. She gathered her attention from wherever it had wandered to and clambered down from her chair.

  As they walked down the garden slope to the riverbank the child ran on ahead.

  “She loves the river,” Helena explained. “I was just the same. My father too. I see a lot of him in her. Every day we come down and she is always the same, racing ahead.”

  “She’s not afraid, then? After the accident?”

  “Not in the least. She lives for it. You’ll see.”

  Indeed, when they came to the river, the girl was on the very edge of the bank, perfectly balanced and rooted, but as close as it was possible to be to the racing water. Rita could not quell the instinct to reach out and place a hand on the girl’s collar, to hold her should she tip over. Helena laughed. “She is born to it. She is in her element.”

  Indeed, the girl was intent on the river. She looked upriver, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth open, with an air that Rita tried to read. Was it expectation? The girl swiveled her head the other way and scanned the horizon downriver. Whatever it was she was hoping for wasn’t there. An expression of weary disappointment came over the child, but she rapidly gathered herself and dashed ahead on her little legs towards the turn in the river.

  Mrs. Vaughan’s eyes never left the child. Whether she spoke of her husband or her father or anything else, her eyes stayed on the girl, and her gaze never altered. It was a flood of love, tender and joyful, and on those occasions when she lifted her eyes to look at Rita, the fleeting glances still brimmed with that love; it washed over Rita and everything it saw. There was something in that look that reminded Rita of looking into the eyes of a person to whom she had given a particularly powerful draft to counter pain, or a man who had taken to drinking the strong, unlabeled alcohol that was so easily available lately.

  They started walking in the direction of the cottage. The child ran ahead, and when she was out of earshot, Helena spoke.

  “This story they are telling, at the Swan . . . that she was dead and then lived again . . .”

  “What of it?”

  “Anthony says they are a fanciful lot at the Swan—that they’ll take anything a little out of the ordinary and embroider it. He says it will all die down and be forgotten. But I don’t like it. What do you make of it?”

  Rita thought for a little while. What was the point of worrying a woman already anxious about her child? On the other hand, she had never been the kind to practice glib lies in the reassurance of her patients. She preferred to find a way of telling the truth in a manner that allowed the patient to take in as much or as little as he or she wanted. The person might ask further questions or they might not. It was up to them. Now she adopted the same strategy. She marshaled truths meticulously. She disguised her thinking time by pretending to pay attention to the hem of her skirt as they walked through a particularly muddy patch. When she was ready, she delivered her scrupulously truthful answer in her most objective fashion.

  “There were some unusual circumstances attached to her rescue from the river. They thought she was dead. She was waxen white. Her pupils were dilated—that means the black center of the iris was wide. She had no discernible pulse. There was no detectable sign of breath. When I got there, that is what I saw too. I didn’t at first locate a pulse, but later I did. She was alive.”

  Rita watched Helena, guessing at what she might be making of this deliberately brief account. There were gaps in it, that a person might notice or not, fill in in any number of different ways, gaps that that might arouse any number of additional questions. What kind of breath is it that is not detectable was one. What kind of pulse is indiscernible? And the word “later” that she had used, the bland little cousin of the more expressive “eventually”: “I couldn’t find a pulse, but later I did.” If it implies a few seconds, the word is innocuous. But a minute? What is one to make of that?

  Helena was not Rita, and she filled the gaps differently. Rita watched her forming her conclusions as she strode alongside her, her eyes on the girl a few yards ahead. The child walked sturdily, careless of the wind and the bursts of rain that stopped and started at random. Her aliveness was a fact all its own; Rita could see how it might easily overshadow all the others.

  “So they thought Amelia was dead, but she wasn’t. It was a mistake. And they made a story out of it.”

  Helena did not seem to need confirmation. Rita did not give it.

  “To think she was so close to death. To think she was found and so nearly lost again.” She drew her eyes from the girl for a brief second, spared a glance for Rita. “Thank heavens you were there!”

  They were nearing Rita’s cottage. “We mustn’t be too late,” Helena said. “The man is coming this afternoon to put locks on the windows.”

  “On the windows?”

  “I have the feeling someone is watching her. It’s for the best. Better safe than sorry.”

  “There is a lot of curiosity about her . . . That is inevitable. It will die down in time.”

  “I don’t mean in public places. I mean in the garden and on the river. A spy.”

  “Have you seen anyone?”

  “No. But I can tell someone is there.”

  “There is nothing new about the kidnap, I suppose? Her return hasn’t loosened tongues?”

  Helena shook her head.

  “Is there anything to give you an idea where she has been these last two years? There was talk about the involvement of the river gypsies, wasn’t there? The police searched their boats at one time, I think?”

  “They did, when they caught up with them. Nothing was found.”

  “And she appeared the night the gypsies were on the river again . . .”

  “To see her use a knife and fork, you might well think she’d been living with gypsies these last two years. But honestly, I cannot bear to think about it.”

  The windblown waves cast a mixture of spume and droplets up into the air, from where it fell again, laying its own complicated pattern over the choppy texture of the water. While she watched the random alterations of the water, Rita puzzled over what reasons the river gypsies would have for stealing a child and returning it to the same place, dead, two years later. She found no answer.

  Helena had been pursuing thoughts of her own. “If I could, I would make those years disappear altogether. Sometimes I wonder whether I have imagined her . . . Or whether it is my longing that has, some
how, brought her back from whatever dark place she has been in. In all that pain, I would have sold my soul, given my life, to have her back again. All that agony . . . And now I sometimes wonder: What if I have? What if she is not altogether real?”

  She turned to Rita, and for a fleeting moment there was in her a horrific glimpse of what the last two years had been. The desperation was so shocking that Rita flinched.

  “But then I only have to look!” The young mother blinked and sought the child with her eyes. Her gaze was once again love-blind. “It’s Amelia. It’s her.”

  They came to a spot not far from Rita’s cottage. “We must say good-bye, Rita, but you’ll come again? Next week?”

  “If you want me to. She is well though. There is no need for you to be concerned.”

  “Come anyway. We like you, don’t we, Amelia?”

  She smiled at Rita, who felt once again the tail end of that sweep of mother’s love, enchanting and radiant and more than a little troubling.

  Continuing homewards, Rita came to the place where a mass of hawthorn growing at a curve in the path made it hard to see ahead. An unexpected smell—Fruit? Yeast?—roused her from her thoughts, and by the time her mind had interpreted the dark shadow in the undergrowth as a person concealed, it was too late. She had gone past, he had leapt out, and before she could cry out, slim arms gripped her from behind and a knife was at her throat.

  “I have a brooch—you can have it. The money is in my purse,” she told him quietly, not moving. The brooch was only tin and glass, but he might not know that. And if he did, the money would console him.

  But that wasn’t what he was after.

  “Do she talk?” She could smell it more strongly now he was so close.

  “Who do you mean?”