Only a very short time ago – two hours or not much more – the body and soul of this little girl had still been securely united. At this thought, and despite all her training, all her experience, Rita found herself suddenly in the grip of a storm of feeling. Not for the first time since they had parted company, she wished for God. God who, in her childhood years, had seen all, known all, understood all. How simple it had been when, ignorant and confused, she could nonetheless put her faith in a Father who enjoyed perfect understanding of all things. She had been able to bear not knowing a thing when she could be sure that God knew. But now …
She took the child’s hand – the perfect hand with its five perfect fingers and their perfect fingernails – laid it in her open palm and closed her other hand over it.
This is wrong! All wrong! It should not be so!
And that is when it happened.
The Miracle
BEFORE MARGOT PLUNGED the injured man’s clothes into the bucket of fresh water, Jonathan went through his pockets. They gave up:
One purse swollen with water, containing a sum of money that would cover all kinds of expenses and still stand them all a drink when he was feeling better.
One handkerchief, sodden.
One pipe, unbroken, and a tin of tobacco. They prised open the lid and found the contents to be dry. ‘He’ll be glad of that, at least,’ they noted.
One ring, to which were linked a number of dainty tools and implements over which they puzzled – was he a clock-mender? they wondered. A locksmith? A burglar? – until the next item was drawn out.
One photograph. And then they remembered the dark stains on the man’s fingers and Rita’s idea that he might be a photographer, and this seemed to lend weight to it. The tools must be something to do with the man’s profession.
Joe took the photograph from his son and dabbed it gently with his woollen cuff to dry it.
It showed a corner of a field, an ash tree, and not a lot else.
‘I’ve seen prettier pictures,’ someone said.
‘It wants a church spire or a thatched cottage,’ said another.
‘It don’t seem to be a photograph of anything exactly,’ a third said, scratching his head in perplexity.
‘Trewsbury Mead,’ said Joe, the only one to recognize it.
They didn’t know what to say, so they shrugged and put the photograph on the mantel to dry and went on to the next and last item to come out of the man’s pockets, which was:
One tin box, in which was a wad of small cards. They peeled off the top one and handed it to Owen, the best reader of them all, who raised a candle and read aloud:
Henry Daunt of Oxford
Portraits, landscapes, city and country scenes
Also: postcards, guide books, picture frames
Thames scenes a speciality
‘She was right,’ they exclaimed. ‘She said he were a photographer, and here’s the proof of it.’
Then Owen read out an address on Oxford’s High Street.
‘Who will be going to Oxford tomorrow?’ Margot asked. ‘Anybody know?’
‘My sister’s husband runs the cheese barge,’ a gravel-digger suggested. ‘I don’t mind going to her house tonight and asking him.’
‘Barge’ll take two days, won’t it?’
‘Can’t leave his family worrying about him for two days.’
‘Surely he won’t be going tomorrow, your sister’s husband? If he did, he wouldn’t be back in time for Christmas.’
‘The railway, then.’
It was decided that Martins would go. He was not wanted at the farm tomorrow, and he had a sister living five minutes from the station at Lechlade. He would go to her house now, to be on hand for the early train. Margot gave him the fare, he repeated the address till he knew it, and set off, with a shilling in his pocket and a brand-new story on his tongue. He had six miles of riverbank along which to rehearse his tale, and by the time he got to his sister’s house he would have it to perfection.
The other drinkers lingered. Storytelling of the usual kind was over for the night – who would stop to tell a story when one was actually happening? – and so they refilled their tankards and glasses, relit their pipes and settled on their stools. Joe put his shaving things away and returned to his chair, where from time to time he discreetly coughed. From his stool by the window, Jonathan kept an eye on the logs in the fire and surveyed the level of the candles. Margot prodded the river-wet clothes into a bucket with an old paddle and gave them a good swirl, then she put the pan of spiced beer back over the stove. The fragrance of nutmeg and allspice mingled with tobacco and burning logs, and the smell of the river receded.
The drinkers began to talk, finding words to turn the night’s events into a story.
‘When I saw him in the doorway there, I was astonished. No, astounded. That’s what I was. Astounded!’
‘I was stunned, I was.’
‘And me. I was stunned and astounded. What about you?’
They were collectors of words, the same way so many of the gravel-diggers were collectors of fossils. They kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique.
‘I reckon I was dumbfounded.’
They tried it out for flavour, weighing it on their tongues. It was good. They gave their colleague admiring nods.
One was new to the Swan, new to storytelling. He was still finding his feet. ‘How about flabbergasted? Could I say that?’
‘Why not?’ they encouraged. ‘Say flabbergasted, if you like.’
Beszant the boat-mender came back in. A boat could tell a story too and he’d been to see what it had to say. Everybody in the inn looked up to hear.
‘She’s there,’ he reported. ‘All bashed in along the saxboard. Graunched something terrible and taking in water. She were half under. I’ve left her upturned on the bank, but nothing can be done. ’Tis all over for her now.’
‘What do you suppose happened? Was it the wharf that he went into?’
He shook his head with authority. ‘Something came smashing down on the boat. From above.’ He brought one hand down powerfully through the air and crashed one palm against the other to demonstrate. ‘Wharf, no – boat’d be bashed in from the side.’
The drinkers now talked themselves up- and downstream, furlong by furlong, bridge by bridge, setting the damage to man and boat against every danger. All were rivermen of one kind or another – if not by profession then by long association – and every man had his say as they tried to work out what had happened. In their minds they smashed the little boat into every jetty and every wharf, every bridge and every millwheel, upstream and down, but none was right. Then they came to Devil’s Weir.
The weir had great uprights of solid ash at regular intervals across the river, and between them were wide expanses of wood, like walls, that could be raised or lowered according to the flow. It was customary to get out of your boat and drag it up the slope that was made for the purpose, in order to go around the weir and then re-enter the water on the other side. There was an inn on the bank, so most of the time you could count on finding someone to give you a hand in exchange for the price of a drink. But sometimes – when the boards were up and the boat was nimble, when the river was calm and the boatman very experienced – then a man might save himself a bit of time and steer through. He would have to align his boat carefully, not take it askew, then he would need to pull in his blades so as not to break them against the great uprights, and – if the river was high – he would need to duck or else throw himself flat on his back in the boat to avoid knocking his head on the weir-beam.