She waited, but he did not speak, lost in his own thoughts.
‘Is it her?’ she asked, after a time. ‘Is she Alice?’
‘I thought you might know. A woman’s instinct, or your Seeing eye.’
She shrugged, touched the patch over her eye. ‘I’d like it to be her. She’s a dear little thing. They have taken to her.’
‘They have. But what about Robin? Is he up to something?’
‘If I know Robin, yes, more than likely. But you are usually his champion – what makes you think so?’
‘That woman. Mrs Eavis. She led me there, to that spot, Bess. I’m as sure as it is possible to be. She deliberately let me see her, then she led me on a mad chase all around the fair, till she came upon the Vaughans, and so timed it that I arrived just right to have the whole scene played out before me.’
He fell to pondering, and Bess waited, knowing he would share his thoughts with her when he had them ordered.
‘What did she have to gain by acting as she did? It is nothing to her whose child it is. Money is what governs that woman, so somebody, somewhere is paying her. Somebody paid for her to go away on her mysterious travels, so she was unavailable to identify the child one way or the other, and somebody has produced her now.’
‘And you think that person is Robin? But … I thought you said he didn’t care about the child?’
He shook his head in confusion. ‘I did say so. It is what I thought.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I don’t know what to think.’
He brooded for a long minute and Bess was about to say it was late and they should get at least a few hours’ sleep, when he spoke again. ‘There was another strange thing happened today.’
He was staring at Freddy’s wooden toy, a carved figurine of a pig.
‘I went to see that photography stand at the fair. I thought we might have a photograph taken, all of us together, here at the farm. I was looking at the photographs for sale there – some were of fairs in recent times – and look what I found.’
He reached into his capacious farmer’s pocket, took out the small photograph in the frame and handed it to Bess.
‘A pig! Well, I never. And it can tell the time!’ She squinted to make out the lettering on the placard beside the animal. ‘And it knows what age you are! Fancy that.’
‘Look closer. Look at the pig.’
‘A Tamworth. Like ours.’
‘Don’t you recognize her?’
She looked again. Bess was familiar with the pigs, but still, to her one pig was very like another. She knew her husband though.
‘It’s not …? Can it be …?’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘It’s Maud.’
Part 4
What Happened Next
TWO DAYS AFTER the summer fair Daunt returned to Oxford, where he found himself distracted from his regular work by the oddity of the dramatic change in circumstances of the child. He was uneasy about it for several reasons, and one, he realized, was that he missed her. It was ludicrous – all the while she had been at the Vaughans’ he had seen her only once, for the photographs. Yet there had been a connection between them: Daunt’s role in saving the girl had forged a link between himself and the family, created a door that he could knock at and count on being opened at any time. He had photographed the girl with the Vaughans and found himself more than halfway to friendship with the family. For a short time he had enjoyed the expectation of seeing the child he had rescued grow up, had imagined he would see her change from a little girl to a bigger one and then to adulthood. Now all that was gone and he felt bereft. He was reminded in his sorrow of that moment of violent recognition at the Swan when he had so unwisely and painfully pulled his swollen eyelids apart to see her. He remembered how powerful had been the urge to claim her. His rational mind had since got the better of him, but reason was no balm for this loss.
When he was not thinking about the girl, he thought about Rita, and that was no better. If the girl had done one thing, it was to bring home to him how much he wanted a child. His wife had been the disappointed one when their marriage had not resulted in children; his own longing had been late in coming, but he felt it now.
On the wall of his room over the shop he kept a collection of his favourite photographs. They were not framed, but simply tacked up. He gazed at them now in painful perplexity. Were there ways of avoiding pregnancy? He had a notion that there were, but that they might not be altogether reliable. And in any case, since he wanted children … Rita couldn’t have made her feelings about the matter plainer, and though he had been surprised – he had seen her tenderness towards the girl, assumed too much – he knew he would be doing her an injustice to try to make her change her mind. Her knowledge of her own mind was what he admired about her. To expect her to bend to his wishes would be to expect her to be other than herself. No, she would not change, so he must.
One by one he took the photographs down, indexed them according to his system and filed them in the drawers in the shop. He would not forget her easily – he had exposed his gaze to her face for too long, and time had fixed it. It would not even be possible to avoid her in person – he could not disentangle himself from the story of the girl, in which Rita was also involved. But he could at least refrain from seeking to spend time alone with her. He resolved that there would be no more photographs. He would have to teach himself not to love her.
The consequence of this wise resolution was that the very next morning he left his assistant in charge, went upriver in Collodion with his camera and knocked at her door.
She met him with a weak smile. ‘Do you have news of her?’
‘No. Have you heard anything?’
‘No.’
She was pale and there were shadows under her eyes. He set up a standard three-quarter-profile seated portrait, then went to prepare the plate. When he returned, a quick assessment of the light told him it would want twelve seconds. Rita settled herself in position and offered her face to the camera. In her usual direct fashion, she hid nothing. Her gaze brimmed with grief. It would be a magnificent portrait, a portrait of her feelings that would be at the same time a portrait of his own feelings, but he felt none of his usual pleasurable anticipation.
‘I can’t bear seeing you so unhappy,’ he said, as he inserted the plate holder.
‘You are feeling no better than I am,’ she said.
He arranged the drape over himself, exposed the glass and whipped the lens cap away, having never felt more miserable behind a camera in his life.
One – Swiftly and without allowing light into the camera he ducked down …
Two – and out of the black cloth …
Three – and ran around the camera …
Four – where he took Rita in his arms …
Five – and said, ‘Don’t cry, darling …’
Six – though his own cheeks were wet too …
Seven – and she lifted her face to him …
Eight – and their lips found each other, until …
Nine – remembering the photograph, he ran …
Ten – back to the camera …
Eleven – under the black cloth, being careful of the light, and …