The parson saw that his visitor’s face was white with cold. His upslanting eyes were running and the tears were freezing on his flat cheeks. His entire face was illuminated with the pleasure of seeing the parson, and his tongue, always too big for his mouth so that it sometimes got in the way of his speech, was resting on his lower lip. Seeing him, the parson was reminded that Jonathan, for all his goodness, was incapable of taking care of himself. He opened the door wide and ushered the boy in.
In the kitchen, the parson heated milk in a pan and placed bread in front of his guest. Jonathan ate and drank – no miracle would get in the way of that – and then told his story again. The child that was dead and came to life again.
The parson listened. He asked a few questions: ‘When you thought to come here, were you in your bed and had been sleeping there? … No? … Well, then, was it your father or Mr Albright that told the story of this child in the inn tonight?’ When he had ascertained that the event – extraordinary and impossible, as Jonathan described it – had some basis in something that had actually happened, and was not the boy’s dream or a tall tale told by some drinker, he nodded. ‘So, in fact, the little girl was not dead at all. But everyone thought she was.’
Jonathan shook his head vehemently. ‘I caught her. I held her. I touched her eye.’ He mimed the catching of a heavy bundle, the holding of it, then the gentle fingertip.
‘A person might seem dead after something terrible has happened. That is possible. To appear to be dead, but in fact only be in a – a kind of sleep.’
‘Like Snow White? I kissed her. Was it that that woke her up?’
‘That is just a story, Jonathan.’
Jonathan considered. ‘Like Jesus, then.’
The parson frowned and was lost for words.
‘She was dead,’ Jonathan added. ‘Rita thought so.’
That was a surprise. Rita was the most reliable person the parson knew.
Jonathan gathered up the breadcrumbs and chewed them.
The parson rose. It was more than he could take in.
‘It’s cold and it’s late. Sleep here for what remains of the night, eh? Here’s a blanket, look, on this chair. You’re worn out.’
Jonathan wanted something else. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Parson? It’s like Jesus, all over again?’
The parson thought if he was lucky his bed would still have a parson-shaped bit of warmth in it. He nodded. ‘The way you have put it before me, yes, Jonathan. The parallels are inescapable. But let’s not cudgel our brains tonight.’
Jonathan grinned. ‘I’m the one that brought you the story.’
‘I won’t forget that. I heard it from you first.’
Jonathan settled down happily in the kitchen chair and his eyes began to close.
The parson climbed the stairs wearily back to his room. In summer he was a different man, sprightly and alert, and people took him for a man a decade younger than his years, but in winter he sank as the skies darkened, and by December he was always tired. When he went to bed he drowned in sleep; when he was wakened from it, dragged from the bleak depths, he was somehow always unrefreshed.
He didn’t know what it was, but something strange had happened tonight at the Swan at Radcot. He would go over there tomorrow. He climbed into his bed, aware that in June it would be getting light already at this time. Yet there were hours of this winter darkness ahead.
‘Let the child – if there is a child – be all right,’ he prayed. ‘And let it soon be spring.’
And then he was asleep.
Clutching his ragged coat to him as if he believed it might afford some protection against the weather, the tramp followed the path to the river. The story he had heard had the smell of money to him – and he knew who might want to buy it. It was not a good path: rocks jutted out of the soil to trick the boots of even a sober man, and where the going was flat it was slippery. When he stumbled, as he did now and again, he flung his arms out for balance and by a miracle found it. Perhaps there were spirits in the darkness that gripped his frozen hands and held him safe. It was a ticklish thought and it made him chuckle. He stumbled on for a bit, and the going was thirsty work. His tongue was furred and stinking like a three-day-dead mouse, so he stopped for a drink from the bottle in his pocket, and then stumbled on a bit more.
When he came to the river, he turned upstream. There were no landmarks in the dark, but at about the time he thought he must surely be level with Brandy Island, he came to a spot he knew.
The name Brandy Island was a new one. In the old days it was just The Island and nobody needed another name for it because nobody ever went there and there was nothing to see. But when the new people came to Radcot Lodge – Mr Vaughan at first and later his young wife – one of the changes they made was the construction on this river-bound sliver of land of the big distillery and vitriol works, and that was what gave the island its name. Acres of fields belonging to Mr Vaughan were turned over to sugar beet, and a light railway was installed to transport the beet on to the island and bring the brandy back. There were jobs a-plenty making liquor on Brandy Island. Or there had been. Something had happened. The brandy was no good or the distillery was inefficient or Mr Vaughan lost interest … But the name had stuck. The buildings were still there, though the machinery lay silent, and the rail tracks still ran to the river’s edge, but the crossing had been dismantled and any crates of ghostly brandy that came rattling along the rails now would end up at the bottom of the river …
What to do? He had thought he might stand on the bank and holler, but now he was here he realized the futility of such a thing. Then – fancy that! – he noticed a small rowing boat moored at the river’s edge – a little one such as a woman might row, left there by chance at just the moment he needed it. He congratulated himself on his luck – the gods were on his side tonight.
He lowered himself into the boat, and though it rocked alarmingly beneath him, he was too drunk to panic and too much a child of the river to topple in. He settled himself and old habit rowed for him, till he felt the nudge of the island’s bank. It was not the landing place, but no matter. Out he clambered, getting wet up to his knees. He climbed up the slope and made his way. The distillery loomed three storeys high in the centre of the island. To the east, the vitriol works. Behind that, the store house. He was as quiet as he could be, but not quiet enough – when his boot tangled with something and he stumbled, a hand came from nowhere and tightened on the back of his neck, keeping him down. A thumb and four fingers pressed painfully into the tendons.
‘It’s me,’ he gasped, winded. ‘It’s only me!’
The fingers loosened. Not a word was uttered, but he followed the man by sound until they came to the store house.
It was a windowless space, and the air was densely fragrant. Yeast and fruit and heady sweetness with a bitter edge, so thick you could hardly inhale it but almost needed to swallow to get it down. The brazier illuminated bottles, copper vessels and barrels, all haphazardly put together. It was nothing like the modern, industrial-scale equipment that had once existed in the factory, though it had been fabricated from pieces stolen from there and with the same aim in mind: the production of liquor.
The man did not so much as glance at his visitor, but settled himself on a stool, where his slim, slight frame was darkly silhouetted against the orange light from the brazier. Without turning, he concentrated on relighting his pipe beneath the low brim of his hat. When it was done, he sucked on it. Only when he had exhaled and added a note of cheap tobacco to the odour did he speak.
‘Who saw you come?’
‘Nobody.’
Silence.
‘No one’s about. Too cold,’ the tramp insisted.
The man nodded. ‘Tell.’
‘A girl,’ the tramp told him. ‘At the Swan at Radcot.’
‘What about her?’
‘Someone have pulled her out the river tonight. Dead, they say.’
There was a pause.
‘What of it?’
‘She is alive.’
At this the man’s face turned, but was no more visible than before. ‘Alive? Or dead? She must be one or the other.’
‘She was dead. Now she is alive.’
There was a slow shaking of the head and the man spoke flatly. ‘You have been dreaming. That or you’ve drunk one too many.’
‘It is what they are saying. I only came to tell you what they are saying. Dead they took her from the river and now she lives again. At the Swan.’
The man stared back into the brazier. The messenger waited to see if there was any further response, but after a minute saw there would be none.
‘A little gesture … For the trouble I’ve took. It’s a cold night.’
The man grunted. He rose, casting a dark and flickering shadow on to the wall, and reached into the darkness. From it his hand extracted a small, corked bottle. He passed it to the tramp, who pocketed it, touched the brim of his hat and retreated.
Back at the Swan, the cat was asleep, curled against the chimney breast that still exhaled a gentle warmth. Its eyelids flickered with the images of cat dreams that would be even more perplexing to us than the stories our human brains concoct nocturnally. Its ear twitched and the dream faded instantly. A sound – almost nothing, the sound of grass crushed underfoot – and the cat was already on all fours. It crossed the room swiftly and silently and sprang to the window ledge. Feline vision pierced the night with ease.
Appearing by stealth from the back of the inn, a slight figure in an overlong coat, hat pulled down low, slipped along the wall, passing the window, and stopped at the door. There was a gentle rattle as he surreptitiously tested the handle. The latch was secured. Other places might be unlocked, but an inn, with its many barrels of temptation, must be locked at night. Now the man returned to the window. Unaware he was being watched, his fingers worked their way by feel around the window frame. Thwarted. Margot was no fool. Hers was the kind of mind that remembered not only to lock the door at closing time, but also to renew the putty in the windows every summer, to maintain the paintwork so the frames could not rot, to replace broken panes. A puff of exasperation emerged from beneath the low brim of the hat. The man paused and a gleam of thought passed across his eyes. But not for long. It was too cold to hang about. He turned and strode smartly away. He knew exactly where to put his feet in the dark, avoided furrows, dodged boulders, found the bridge, crossed it, and on the other side diverged from the path into the trees.
Long after the intruder had disappeared from sight, the cat followed him by ear. The drag of twigs across the woollen grain of a coat, the contact of heels on stone-cold earth, the stir of woodland creatures disturbed … until, eventually, nothing.
The cat dropped to the floorboards and returned to the hearth, where it pressed itself against the warm stone again and went back to sleep.
So it was that after the impossible event, and the hour of the first puzzling and wondering, came the various departures from the Swan and the first of the tellings. But finally, while the night was still dark, everybody at last was in bed and the story settled like sediment in the minds of them all, witnesses, tellers, listeners. The only sleepless one was the child herself, who, at the heart of the tale, breathed the seconds lightly in and lightly out, as she gazed into the darkness and listened to the sound of the river as it rushed by.