by Pauline Fisk
For David
‘The ancients had river gods; we too have them in our minds and feel their qualities. For rivers are things of life and personality, of soul and character.’
A.G. Bradley, The Book of the Severn
(Methuen, 1920)
Contents
Part One: River Mist
A body on the water
A boy on the street
The sweetest music
Hallowe’en
Part Two: River Fortress
Abren
St Chad’s crypt
No questions asked
Bentley’s carol
Part Three: Dark River
Red
Old Sabrina
Millennium night
Remembering
Football fever
Part Four: River Secrets
Compass House
Guinness Railwaybridge
The comfort blanket
What swans do
In the library
Part Five: River Source
Blaen Hafren
The mountain man
Calling the corph candle
No photographs
Old Hall
St Curig’s bees
Cŵn y Wbir
The source
Part Six: River in Flood
Able-bodied men
Abren in flood
Effrildis
The Palace of Pengwern
Part Seven: Queen of Rivers
A pinch of dust
The upriver trow
Elvers
Under angels’ wings
Also by Pauline Fisk for Bloomsbury
Part One
River Mist
A body on the water
When the day began the body was there. The night mist parted and it floated slowly on the silent river like a tree snapped at the root. Its hair spread across the water like a halo of little branches. Its face was deathly white. Its eyes stared like knots of wood, shiny and unseeing as a town approached.
The flourishing market town of Pengwern; when it was a city and a fortress, its watchmen would have noticed anything that came rolling downriver from the Welsh mountains. But its modern skyline looked down upon the body without seeing it. Even when the early morning mist began to melt, it made no difference.
The body floated towards the town and nobody saw a thing. It floated past water meadows where early morning walkers exercised their dogs. Past the water tower which marked the approach to the town. Past steep-gardened houses where curtains were drawn back for the new day, toasters popping, kettles boiling, radios and television sets blaring out the morning news. But nobody paused to look down from their windows and see anything unusual in the river.
Even the wildfowl on the water failed to see anything amiss – moorhens dabbling in the shallows as if the body weren’t there, and swans floating past, stately and unperturbed. A heron swooped low, casting a ghostly shadow over the body, and a white gull landed on its shoulder, hitching a ride, its eyes peeled for fish.
But as if it didn’t know or care what happened to it, the body floated on, carried by the river until the town rose overhead. It stood like an island in a horseshoe loop in the river – a jumble of towers and spires, castle walls and new shopping malls, medieval mansions, and train and bus stations. The river carried the body past them all – and nobody saw anything! Not on the main road, packed full of morning traffic. Not on the Welsh Bridge, where cars inched nose to bumper into town.
Even when the body passed beneath the bridge and swept on to the Quarry Park, nobody noticed anything. Here, cyclists pedalled beneath avenues of trees and mothers pushed babies. Leaves fell like snowflakes into the river, and everybody turned to watch. But no one saw a body floating through the leaves.
It was as if the body weren’t there, floating on its way without caring what happened or knowing where it was. It floated past a school with girls out on the hockey pitch, but never waved to them for help. Floated past a boat club, but never called to its rowers on the water. Floated past a row of tennis courts, but never tried to attract its players as it flowed on round the town.
Finally the castle appeared, viewed from the English Bridge on the east side of Pengwern. By now the morning rush hour was easing off and there were fewer people about to see a body drifting along. But a policeman leant over the bridge, and he didn’t notice anything. And a lone cyclist took the river path on the far side of the bridge, and he never once glanced at the body which was starting down the straight stretch to the town’s last bridge.
The old, iron-girdered railway bridge.
Here, caught beneath the shadows of the castle, the river began to change. A thin wind blew up it, scuffing the water into rows of sharp waves which ran between the high fence of a football pitch and a treeless path beneath the old town walls. The body started down this gloomy stretch of water, and the waves broke over it, knocking it about.
No longer did it float serenely, like a dead queen on her funeral journey. It shook like a rag doll, bobbed like a plastic bottle, took in water like a sinking ship. It went under water and came up again. Went down again – and started struggling at long last.
The body wasn’t dead, after all. It was alive. Its eyes blinked out water, and its shoulders hunched against the waves. Its hands rose in a plea for help, and its head turned, revealing a face.
It was a child’s face. A little girl’s.
She let out a cry, as thin as the wind. But nobody heard. The paths were deserted on either side of the river, with no more cyclists in sight. There was not a figure on the castle walls, and even the policeman had gone from the English Bridge. Only the pigeons looked down from the fast-approaching railway bridge. But whether they saw the girl, it was impossible to tell.
She bobbed towards them, drawing closer all the time, swept along on a white-water ride. Just as the darkness of the bridge was about to fall on her, a woman with a push-chair suddenly emerged from the tunnel which ran under the bridge. The girl saw her and fluttered her hands, trying to attract attention. But the woman didn’t see her. She just hurried on. Even the child in her push-chair didn’t see anything.
It was as if the girl weren’t there, out in the middle of the river. A race walker emerged from the tunnel, too, shoulders tight, buttocks swinging. The girl tried again, but it was just the same. The race walker swung on, leaving the river to drive the girl under the bridge.
Now its black stone arches loomed overhead, and its gun-grey girders bent down like an iron mouth to eat her up. Waves ran ahead of her, disappearing out of sight, and the girl followed without a choice. There was nobody to help her. The treeless path stood empty. The cobbled tunnel stood empty. The girl was all alone. Whirlpools swirled around her. There was no escaping.
The waves dragged her down. Down and out, down and under, one minute there; and the next gone! The waves broke over her and the riverbed reached for her. Soft and silty, its tendrils of weed drew her down to where she’d never see the railway bridge again. Never have to cry for help again, nor cry for all the things she wouldn’t see or do or be. All the things she wouldn’t know – like who she was, and where she’d come from in the first place, and why she was ending up in the dark like this. Ending her story on chapter one.
‘I want to live!’ the girl cried out. ‘It’s just not fair! Give me a chance – that’s all I ask!’
Just a chance.
Suddenly – as if the wanting it changed everything – the girl was up again. Nothing could keep her down, not even a silty riverbed, thick with weed. Stronger than whirlpools and stronger than waves, stronger than the railway bridge and stronger than anything, she was up like an arrow. She was reaching through the water, and in a seamless motion which s
aw her break its surface and head for the shore, she was fighting for her life. The iron girders, looming overhead, held no fears for her. And neither did the river. She knew that she could beat it. Every stroke was easy.
The bridge fell behind and the town drew close. The girl swam into the lee of a stone wharf where, amid a flotsam of old twigs and plastic bottles, her arms and legs finally gave out. The river deposited her on a small beach where she lay unable to move, her burst of energy gone as quickly as it had come.
She had landed at last. The girl looked down at herself. She wore a cotton shift-dress which clung, soaking wet, to her body, and a woollen blanket-thing, tied in a dripping knot under her chin. Her feet were blue, throbbing with the cold. Her hair was plastered over her eyes, but she didn’t even have the energy to raise a hand and wipe it away.
She lay a long time without the energy to do anything. A walker looked down on her from the top of the wharf, then hurried on, tutting to himself at the antics of some people’s children. The girl watched him disappear. He passed through an archway in the old town wall and started up a steep lane. Once he half-turned back, as if having second thoughts about leaving a child on the water’s edge like that. Then he carried on – much to her relief.
He’d done what was needed, after all. Done all that she needed, at least! It means I can’t be dreaming, the girl thought. This must be really happening. Someone’s seen me at last!
A boy on the street
Phaze II walked through the town without anybody seeing him. He had the knack. He had it down to a fine art. He was a tall boy, and painfully thin, but nobody ever said, ‘Who’s that boy?’ or, ‘Shouldn’t he be in school?’ With his big black coat wrapped around him and his head kept down, nobody ever noticed him.
It was a cold day, winter on the way. Phaze II turned up his collar and cut through Old St Chad’s Square on his way to the warmth and brightness of the shops on Pride Hill. Old St Chad’s was a quiet square, where the town’s colonels and bank managers lived out their retirements in tall town houses behind iron gates. In the centre of the square stood a grassy mound, and upon the mound stood the crumbling remains of an old church, its ruined walls open to the sky and to the crows which circled over it, waiting for the Chadman to feed them.
He was coming along now – an old man with matted hair, gnarled hands, torn clothes and bursting boots, settling on his usual bench with his bags of food around him. Phaze II passed him, and the crows came swooping down. They settled on the Chadman’s head, shoulders, hands and lap. It was always like this with him, day in, day out, rain or shine. Phaze II carried on and the Chadman didn’t see him. He never noticed anybody, preferring birds to human company.
Phaze II knew just how he felt. Leaving the Chadman whistling to the birds through his long parchment-yellow teeth, he slipped into an alley and started rummaging among the dustbins. In no time at all he’d found a couple of apples, a piece of cheese – which would be fine once the mould was scraped off – and half a jar of fermenting jam. These he tucked into the voluminous pockets of his coat, ready to move on for fresh pickings on Pride Hill. But a woman appeared, driving him back into the shadows.
She was dressed in a camel-coloured coat, and had a newspaper tucked under her arm like a weapon. For a moment Phaze II thought that she was coming for him, but she carried on without seeing him. She had something else in her sights.
The Chadman.
Phaze II watched the woman emerge into the square, heading straight for the old man, who was breaking up sandwiches for the birds. He hadn’t seen her yet – but he soon would! She crossed the square, passed the old wall which held up the grassy mound and started up the path which ran across the top of it.
‘Hey! You there!’ she called. ‘You! Fellow! I’ve told you before! If you don’t stop what you’re doing, right now, I’ll call the police!’
The Chadman carried on as if he hadn’t heard, and Phaze II laughed into his collar. The idea that anybody – even the police – could change the Chadman’s habits of a lifetime was amusing, to put it mildly. Phaze II watched the woman reach the bench and start chasing off the crows, shaking her newspaper at them. They made their getaway, flapping up on to the ruined walls. The woman kept on at the Chadman, thrusting her newspaper into his face and shouting:
‘A public nuisance, that’s what you are! Spoiling our square with your filthy vermin! I’ll have you put away if you don’t stop feeding those crows! Do you hear me?’
The Chadman didn’t hear her – or so it seemed, sitting staring through the woman as if she weren’t there. More furious than ever, she grabbed his bacon sandwiches and threw them into a nearby bin, plucked bits of meat, bread and birdseed off the ground, and binned them too. All the while, he sat and let her do it. Even when she thrust her morning paper at him again, he sat and let her. His eyes glazed over as if he were away somewhere else, in a dream of his own making.
The woman snorted with the sheer frustration of fighting someone who wouldn’t fight back, gave up at last and stomped away. Phaze II saw her coming, and melted between the dustbins, holding his breath until she’d swept past. He had a name for people like her. People who ran the town as if they owned it. Who had everything, but you never saw them sharing it. Who always knew what was good for everybody else, and were always telling everyone about it. People who had lives to live and families to go home to.
Scuds, he called them. Stupid scuds.
The woman disappeared, slamming a door behind her. Phaze II prepared to carry on at last to Pride Hill, but something new caught his attention. A girl came slinking into the square in a way that Phaze II recognised as his own. As different from the striding woman as anyone could be, she edged along the grassy mound, moving through the shadows with her head down.
Phaze II watched her with more than curiosity. He knew everyone by sight, but the way he knew this girl was different. His hair stood up on end. He had dreamt about her last night! Watched her turn her head and seen her face as pale as a ghost’s, even as he saw it now. Her eyes had been full of sadness and in the dream he’d wondered why she was so alone. Now he wondered again, taking in the soaking dress sticking to her body, and nothing else to keep her warm but some scrappy little shawl-thing tied around her neck.
Phaze II followed the girl, Pride Hill forgotten. She reached the end of the mound where he could see her face-on. There was something strange about her – something eerie. It wasn’t just the dream making everything about her seem strange, and it wasn’t that she plainly didn’t know her way around. Even a couple of of BC boys picked up on it. Self-styled Border Commandos, normally so tough – and normally no friends to strangers – but they let her pass them on the square without a comment.
Phaze II waited until they’d gone, then followed the girl down Dogpole Alley. She reached the Bytheways’ house, where their front door stood open and a sweater hung over the railings next to a garden fork and a row of potted plants. Nobody was in sight, but Phaze II could hear voices in the house.
So, it seemed, could the girl. She looked both ways and suddenly Phaze II knew what she was going to do. The voices started growing louder and, as if she realised how little time she had, the girl snatched the sweater and made off. She was very quick – but then she had to be. Only seconds later Mrs Bytheway emerged on to her front step, ready to get on with her potting.
‘My sweater! My birthday sweater! It’s gone!’
She ran back indoors, calling to her husband that her special present had been stolen. Phaze II seized his chance and hurried after the girl. But when he reached the end of the alley, emerging on to Pride Hill, she had already gone. Everybody else was there – shoppers, business people, Buddhist boys peddling tracts, farmers in town for market day, buskers and tourists. But no girl.
Phaze II searched for her, all the same. It was a small town and she couldn’t have gone far. He scoured Pride Hill, all the way up to the high town cross at the top. Then he scoured the new shopping mall, slipping like
a shadow up and down its levels and in and out of its glittering shops.
Then he looked in all the other places where he would have gone himself if he’d wanted to find a quiet corner to dry off. But the girl wasn’t in the library in the hidden alcove between ‘Local History’ and ‘Fishing’. She wasn’t in the castle. She wasn’t in any of the old churches. She wasn’t in the bus station, or the railway station, or even sheltering in the warmth of the town museum. She wasn’t in the all-day pubs in the wild west end of town, between the Welsh Bridge and the market hall. She wasn’t even in the Mardol Cinema, disused and boarded up but easy to get into.
She wasn’t anywhere. Or so it seemed.
Only at the end of the day did Phaze II catch sight of the girl again. He was down in the wild west end, heading for the market to see if any of the traders had left anything behind. The market hall was locked but the girl stood outside its reinforced glass doors, gazing at her reflection. She was wearing the stolen sweater, which came down to her knees, and had found a pair of ill-fitting shoes to go with it. But it obviously wasn’t them that the girl was looking at.
It was herself.
Phaze II stepped into the shadows so that the girl wouldn’t see him. But he needn’t have worried. There was something completely self-absorbed about the way she stared at her reflection. Something very odd. She wasn’t preening. There wasn’t anything self-pitying in her gaze. There wasn’t even anything curious.
It was only later that Phaze II realised what it was. He was making his way up Pride Hill in the dark. The girl had long since gone again, melted into the night. All the shops were shuttered and only a few last workers were about, heading for the station while the town beggars called after them for small change.
Phaze II slipped past them all, in the shadows until he reached the bright lights of the shopping mall at the top of the hill. And suddenly there he was reflected in a window – a tall gangling boy in a flapping coat. He stared at himself and it dawned on him that the girl hadn’t looked the way that he did, knowing what he’d find. She’d stared in the way people stared at strangers. As if she’d never seen that person reflected in the glass door.
