‘This is a good pulse point. I pressed firmly, waited for another minute. There was nothing. Nothing, and nothing, and more nothing. I told myself I was mad to be standing in the dark and the bitter cold, waiting for a pulse to beat in a dead child. Then it came again.’
‘How slow can a heart beat?’
‘Children’s hearts are faster than adult hearts. A hundred beats a minute is quite ordinary. Sixty is dangerous. Forty is perilous. At forty, you expect the worst.’
On the inside of his eyelids he saw his own thoughts rise in blue, cloud-like shapes. Above them he saw her thoughts, deep maroon and green stripes, moving horizontally from left to right across his field of vision, like slow and intent lightning flashes.
‘One beat per minute … I have never known the pulse rate of a child fall to less than forty per minute. Except when it falls to zero.’
Her fingertip retained its connection with his skin. In a moment or two she would come out of her distraction and remove it. He tried to keep her in this train of thought.
‘Below forty and they die?’
‘In my experience, yes.’
‘But she wasn’t dead.’
‘She wasn’t dead.’
‘She was alive.’
‘At one beat a minute? It’s not possible.’
‘But if it was impossible for her to be living and impossible for her to be dead, what was she?’
His blue clouds of thought dissolved. The leaf-green and plum stripes swelled with intensity and moved so far to the right that they were out of range. She exhaled a lungful of frustration, withdrew her fingers from his neck, and splinters of bronze shot up in his vision as from a falling coal in the fire.
It was he who broke the silence. ‘She was like Quietly. Between the two states.’
He heard a puff of exasperation that ended in a half-laugh.
He laughed. The stretch of his skin made him cry out in pain.
‘Ow,’ he cried. ‘Ow!’
It brought her attention back to him, brought the tips of her fingers back to his skin. As she held the cooling cloth against his face, he realized that his vision of Rita Sunday had altered in the course of their conversation. She now looked not altogether unlike the maidens of destiny.
Is It Finished?
THE WINTER ROOM was alive with voices and tightly packed with drinkers, many of them standing, for there were not enough seats. Margot stepped out from the dim corridor and nudged the nearest backs, saying, ‘Step aside, please, make room.’ They shuffled out of her way and she stepped into the fray. Close behind her, Mr Vaughan appeared with the child wrapped in a blanket in his arms. Behind them came Mrs Vaughan, delivering little nods of thanks to left and right.
At the sight of the child, those first drinkers hushed. Those who were a little deeper in the room caught the sudden drop of noise behind them, found Margot prodding them out of the way, and fell quiet in turn. The girl’s head rested on Vaughan’s shoulder, her face pressed into his neck, half concealed. Her eyes were closed. The slump of her body told them she was asleep. The silence made faster progress than the Vaughans did, and before they were halfway to the door, the peace was as resounding as the din had been a few moments before. The crowd leant and rose on tiptoes and peered hungrily to secure a better view of the girl’s sleeping face, and at the back some clambered on to stools and tables to see her. Margot no longer needed to prod and nudge, for the mass of bodies parted of its own accord, and when they reached the door a bargeman stood ready to open it for them.
The Vaughans passed through the door.
Margot nodded at the bargeman to close it behind them. No one had moved. Where the crowd had parted, a curved line of floorboards was still visible. After a moment of stillness when nobody spoke, there came a shuffling of feet, the clearing of throats, and in no time the crowd remassed and the boom of voices was louder even than before.
For another hour they talked. Every detail of the day’s events was gone over, the facts were weighed and combined, quantities of surmising, eavesdropping and supposition were stirred in for flavour, and a good sprinkling of rumour added like yeast to make it rise.
There came the sense that the story had now moved on. It was no longer here, at the Swan at Radcot, but out there, in the world. The drinkers remembered the rest of the world: their wives and children, their neighbours, their friends. There were people out there who did not yet know the story of the Vaughans and young Armstrong. In ones and twos, and then in a trickle that became a steady stream, the drinkers departed. Margot organized the more sober of the lingerers to escort the most drunken along the riverbank and see that they did not fall in.
When the door closed on the last of the drinkers and the winter room was empty, Joe set to sweeping the floor. He made frequent pauses to rest on the broom and catch his breath. Jonathan carried in logs. There was an uncharacteristic air of melancholy in his angled eyes as he tipped the logs into the basket by the fire.
‘What’s the matter, son?’
The boy sighed. ‘I wanted her to stay with us.’
His father smiled and ruffled his hair. ‘I know you did. But she doesn’t belong here.’
Jonathan turned to fetch a second load of logs, but when he got to the door he turned back, unconsoled.
‘Is it finished, Dad?’
‘Finished?’
Jonathan watched his father put his head on one side and gaze up at the dark corner where the stories came from. Then his eyes came back to Jonathan and he shook his head.
‘This is just the beginning, son. There’s a long way still to go.’
Part 2
Things Don’t Add Up
SITTING ON THE bottom step of the stairs, Lily pushed her right foot into a boot. She held on to the tongue so that it would not get trapped under the laces, but her stocking rucked half a dozen wrinkles at the back of her heel and wedged her foot forwards. She sighed. Her boots were always conspiring to thwart her. Nothing was ever right with them. They pressed on her bunions, they rubbed her raw, and no matter how much straw she packed them with overnight, they always kept a little bit of dampness back to chill her in the morning. She eased her foot out, straightened the stocking, tried again.
When both her boots were on, Lily buttoned up her coat and wound a scarf round her neck. She did not put on gloves, for she had none. Outside, the cold sliced through her coat without resistance and sharpened its blade against her skin, but she scarcely noticed. She was used to it.
Her morning routine never varied. First she went down to the river. Today the level was as she expected, neither high nor low. There was no angry rush and no menacing loitering. The water did not hiss particularly, nor roar, nor dart spiteful splashes at her hem. It flowed steadily, wholly engaged on some calm business of its own, and had not the slightest interest in Lily and her doings. She turned her back on it and went to feed the pigs.
Lily filled one bucket with grain and the other with swill. It released a warmly rotten aroma into the air. The gilt came to the dividing wall as was her habit. She liked to raise her head and scratch the underside of her chin on the top of the low wall. Lily scratched the spot behind the pig’s ears at the same time. The gilt grunted in pleasure and gave her a look from beneath her ginger eyelashes. Lily heaved the two buckets out and round to the feeding place, tottering under the weight. One by one, she tipped the contents of the buckets into the trough and then pulled back the planks that barred the opening. When she had done that, she took her own breakfast out of her pocket – one of the less bruised apples from the shelf – and bit into it. She didn’t mind a bit of company at breakfast time. The boar came out first – he always did, males put themselves first in everything – and lowered his snout immediately to the trough. The female came after him, her eyes still fixed on Lily, so that once more Lily wondered what the reason could be for such a stare. It was an odd look, almost human, as if the pig wanted something.