‘I’d have liked,’ – another inadequate breath – ‘a better summer.’
‘I know.’
‘I shall miss – Margot. The family. This world has – marvellous things – I shall miss –’
‘The river?’
‘There will – always be – the river.’
He closed his eyes, and she watched the arduous heaving of his frail chest, planning the draughts she could make and bring to Margot tomorrow to aid his suffering without weakening him further. He fell into a slumber animated by presences visible only to him. Once or twice he uttered words, mostly indecipherable, but she thought she heard river … Quietly … story.
After a time he opened his eyes, blinking as he surfaced.
‘Have you spoken to Margot?’ she asked.
His eyebrows told her no.
‘Wouldn’t it be better? Give her a bit of warning?’
The eyebrows indicated yes.
He closed his eyes, slipped back into sleep. She thought he might sleep longer this time, but as she was about to get up and slip out of the room, he opened his eyes again. He had the look he had when he was sinking.
‘There are stories you have never heard on the other side of the river … I can only half remember them when I am this side … Such stories …’
‘He’s very poorly,’ she told Margot. ‘I’ll bring you something tomorrow that will make him more comfortable.’
‘It’s this rain. He won’t pick up till the weather improves.’
A customer called for cider and she didn’t need to answer. When Margot came back, she said to Rita, ‘You look worn out yourself. The night is almost over and I bet you haven’t had a bite to eat since lunchtime. Sit here, where nobody can see you, and have a plate of something. You won’t be bothered and you can slip out the back afterwards.’
Gratefully Rita sat down to bread and cheese. The door was ajar. There was a great din of conversation and in it she heard Vaughan and Armstrong mentioned many times. She couldn’t think about it any more. Thank goodness for the gravel-diggers.
‘There is this fellow,’ she heard one say, ‘and he reckons – he reckons, I’m telling you – that humans, like you and me, are a kind of monkey!’ He explained Darwin as best he could, to the hilarity of his mates.
‘And I have heard another thing like that!’ cried another. ‘That men once had tails and fins and lived beneath the water!’
‘What? Under the river? I never heard such a thing!’
They disputed the matter back and forth, and the one who said it insisted that he had heard it in an inn ten miles upstream, and the other insisted he had made it up.
‘It can’t be,’ said another. ‘You’d ask Margot to fill your glass and all that’d come out’d be …’ he completed his sentence with an impression of underwater speech that tickled the others so much they all tried it. Very ingeniously, they then found the trick of blowing bubbles through the liquor left in their glasses. There was great laughter, much spluttering, and finally the sound of someone enjoying himself so much he fell off his chair, and floundered like a landed fish on the stone flags.
Rita passed her plate to the Little Margot in the kitchen, let herself out the back door and crept away. It was nearly morning. She might sleep for an hour.
Great Lakes Underground
LILY HAD SEEN the events of the afternoon from the back of the crowd, her view so obscured by the broad shoulders of working men and the summer hats of their companions that she had been able to make it out only with the help of her neighbours. The taller spectators broadcast what they had heard and the sharp-eared echoed what they had heard, but poor Lily, once she had struggled against the departing throng to the place where the encounter had taken place, found rain falling on an empty arena.
She went to the parsonage and burst into the parson’s office in a great flurry of words and tears.
‘Take your time, Mrs White,’ he counselled, but she would not, and eventually he made out the gist of the story, and eventually she fell silent and breathed again.
‘So the child has been recognized by the deceased Mrs Armstrong’s landlady, is that it? And she is with young Mr Armstrong now?’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘If what you say is true … I don’t know how poor Mrs Vaughan will take it. Are you quite certain of this, Mrs White?’
‘As sure as day is day! I saw it. I heard it. Or as good as. But tell me, Parson, how can a young man like that have the care of a little girl? He won’t know. Suppose he don’t know how to sing her a lullaby when she wakes in the night? And does he have a guard on the fireplace? A lot of young men don’t, you know. What about her doll? Did she take that with her?’
The parson did his best, but it was an anxiety no mortal could soothe, and Lily was still distressed as she left the parsonage. Walking back along the riverbank she was prey to the very worst thoughts and memories. All the while Ann had been with the Vaughans, Lily had been able to take refuge in thinking of the child’s well-being whenever she felt afraid, for the child was with Mrs Vaughan, but that comfort was lost to her now. Ann had been placed into the arms of a young man – a widower, without a wife – so who would take care of her now? Mothers could be trusted, but … The past came back to her with all the more force for having been held at bay for six months. She remembered the very beginning of it all.
‘Do you find it lonely living without a father?’ her mother had asked one day. ‘Do you think it would be nice to have a father again?’ Sometimes when adults asked questions they already knew the answer they wanted you to give, and Lily liked to give the answer that made her mother smile. Her mother was smiling on the front of her face as she asked the question, but Lily could see the worry behind. Lily felt her mother’s scrutiny as she thought about her answer.
‘I don’t know,’ she’d said. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it, just us?’
Her mother had seemed relieved. But some time later the question had returned, so Lily thought she must have got it wrong the first time. She watched her mother’s face, wanting only to please her, and tried again. ‘Yes, I would like a daddy.’
The look on her mother’s face then was one that was kept mostly on the inside, and Lily was no closer to knowing if it was the right answer.
Soon after that a man came to their rooms. ‘So, you are little Lily,’ he’d said, looming over her. His teeth seemed to slope backwards into his mouth, and after the first glance she knew she did not like looking at his eyes.
‘This is Mr Nash,’ her mother explained nervously. In response to a glance from the man, she rushed on, ‘He is going to be your new father.’ She looked to him for approval and he nodded, without smiling.
The new father stood aside.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is Victor.’
Revealed behind him was a boy, shorter than Lily but older. His nose was stunted, his lips so meagre they were all but invisible. His eyebrows were as pale as his skin and his eyes were slits.
A hole opened in the boy’s face. He is going to eat me, was Lily’s first thought.
‘Smile at your new brother,’ her mother’s voice prompted.
Hearing a note of fear, she glanced up, caught a complicated to-and-fro of glances between her mother and the new father. It seemed to enmesh her mother in a tangle she was unable to escape from. Is it my fault? Lily wondered. What did I do wrong? She didn’t want to get things wrong. She wanted to make her mother happy.