‘Outside,’ Robin muttered. They stepped out of the inn and stood a yard apart, in semi-darkness, on a bank of gravel between the river and the inn.
‘Is this where your money goes? Gambling? Or is it the house you’re always in need of funds for? You are living beyond your means.’
A puff of disdain emerged from Robin’s nostrils. ‘How did you find me?’ he asked dully.
Armstrong couldn’t help being surprised by his son. Always he expected something better.
‘Have you no better greeting than that for your father?’
‘What do you want?’
‘And your mother – you don’t ask after her?’
‘You’d tell me, I suppose, if anything was wrong.’
‘Something is wrong. But it is not your mother.’
‘It’s raining. Say what you have come to say, so I can go back inside.’
‘What are your intentions regarding the child?’
‘Ha! Is that all?’
‘All? Robin, this is a child we are talking about. The happiness of two families is at stake here. These are not things to make light of. Why the delay?’
In the fast-dying light, he thought he saw his son’s lip give a cynical twist.
‘Is she yours? If she is, what do you mean to do about it? And if not—’
‘It’s none of your business.’
Armstrong sighed. He shook his head and took another direction. ‘I went to Bampton.’
Robin looked at his father more intently, but said nothing.
‘I went back to the house where your wife lodged. Where she died.’
Robin still said nothing, and the intensity of his hostility did not waver.
‘This lover your wife took – they know nothing of such a man.’
Still nothing.
‘Who have you told this to?’ There was menace in Robin’s voice.
‘I meant to bring the landlady to Buscot to see the child, but she—’
‘How dare you? This is my business – mine alone. I’m warning you – keep out of my affairs.’
It took Armstrong a moment to recover. ‘Your business? Robin, there is a child’s future at stake here. If she is your child, then she is my grandchild. If she is not your child, she is the Vaughans’ child. In neither instance can it be said that it is your business. One way or the other, it is family business.’
‘Family!’ Robin spat out the word like a curse.
‘Who is her father, Robin? A child needs a father.’
‘I’ve done all right without one.’
Robin swivelled, scattering the gravel under his heels, and was starting back to the Green Dragon when Armstrong gripped his shoulder. Armstrong was only half surprised when his son swung round violently and a fist came towards him. Instinct brought his arm up to protect himself, but before the wildly thrown fist could make contact, his own fist met flesh and teeth, and Robin cursed.
‘Forgive me,’ Armstrong said. ‘Robin – I’m sorry. Are you hurt?’
But Robin continued directing kicks and punches towards his father in an awkward scuffle, while Armstrong gripped his shoulders to hold him at a distance, so that fists and feet landed their blows at the far extent of their reach, when most of the power was gone out of them. He had held Robin off like this numerous times when he was a child and a juvenile; then his only concern had been to stop Robin hurting himself in his fury. Now his son’s blows were more expert, and there was greater strength behind them, but they were still no match for his own greater height and power. Gravel flew, and curses, and Armstrong was aware that the noise would almost certainly bring observers to the windows.
What ended the affray was the sound of the inn door opening.
‘All right?’ came a voice through the rain.
Abruptly Robin abandoned the fight. ‘All right,’ he answered.
The inn door remained open; presumably someone continued to watch from the doorway.
His son turned to go without a handshake.
‘Robin!’ Armstrong called in a low voice after him. And lower stilclass="underline" ‘Son!’
A few yards away, Robin turned. He spoke low too, barely audible above the rain, but his words reached their target and hurt as his fists could never have done: ‘You are not my father, and I am not your son!’
He reached the door, exchanged a word with his companion there, and they went inside, closing the door without looking back.
Armstrong walked back along the river. He blundered into willow, half tripped on one of the gnarled roots that lurked in the dark, and rainwater ran down his neck. His knuckle was stinging. The damage he’d barely felt at the time was now intensely painful. He had caught Robin’s lip and teeth. Raising his hand to his mouth, he tasted blood. His own or his son’s?
The river ran past, agitated by the rain and its own rush, and Armstrong stood silent and still in the rain, lost in his own reflections. You are not my father, and I am not your son. He would give anything to take that moment back. What could he have done differently? What could he have said to make it better? He had blundered, and perhaps that blundering had severed ties that might otherwise – in a few weeks or months or years – have been stimulated to warmth and affection again. What had just happened felt like the end of everything. He had lost his son and, with him, the world.
The rainwater ran with his tears, and the words sounded again and again in his thoughts. You are not my father, and I am not your son.
At last, wet and cold, he shook his head. ‘Robin,’ he answered, in words only the river heard, ‘you may not want to be my son, but I cannot help but be your father.’
He turned downstream and began the long journey home.
Some Stories Are Not for Telling
THERE ARE STORIES that may be told aloud, and stories that must be told in whispers, and there are stories that are never told at all. The story of the marriage of Mr and Mrs Armstrong was one of these latter ones, known only to the two parties to whom it belonged and the river. But as secret visitors to this world, as border-crossers between one world and another, there is nothing to prevent us sitting by the river and opening our ears; then we will know it too.
When Robert Armstrong turned twenty-one, his father offered to buy him a farm. A land agent suggested a number of properties and Robert went to visit them all. The one that matched his hopes and expectations the best was that belonging to a man called Frederick May. Mr May had been a good farmer, but he had had only daughters and those daughters had married men with land enough of their own, all except one who was crippled and unmarried and stayed at home. Now that Mr May was old, he and his wife had decided to sell up all but the patch of land around the small cottage that they also owned, not far from the farmhouse. They would live in the cottage and grow vegetables and flowers and let someone else have the trouble of the land and the big house. With the proceeds of the farm they would be well off, and if the prospect of a good dowry was not enough to marry off their youngest child, well, at least the money would be a safeguard for her when they had passed away.