‘Then I have sorry news for you, Mr Armstrong. I heard it told last night, at the cockfighting. Fellow on his way to Lechlade for the morning train told it to all o’ us. A little girl plucked out o’ the river, drowned.’
So, she was gone. It was only to be expected.
‘Where was this?’
‘The Swan, at Radcot.’
The fellow was not without kindness. Seeing Armstrong’s grief he added, ‘I don’t say as it’s the child you are looking for. Chances are it’s a different girl altogether.’
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, wandered 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 another 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 in her 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 dream-like 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.
Still 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 straight away. 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?’ Margot asked.
‘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.’
‘Simple-minded?’ 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 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.