‘You see, I know what it is not to belong, and when Robin was born, I saw myself in him. More in him, if truth be told, than in any of the others, strange as it may seem. The others are mine in the sense that the world understands. They are my flesh and blood and I love them. I love my boys and girls more than life itself. Seeing them together, I see my mother’s children, the pleasure they take in each other and in their parents. It gives me joy to know I have been able to make this life for them. But when I see Robin – who is not my own, not in the same way, and that is my good Bess’s misfortune and not her fault – well, I see a child on the edge of things. I see a child who could so easily have fallen between the cracks in families. Who could have been lost. And I determined – not on the day he was born; no, long before that – to hold him dear in my heart. To cherish him as a child needs to be cherished. To love him as every child deserves to be loved. My wish was always to ensure that he would always know he belonged in my heart. For if there is one thing I cannot bear, it is the suffering of a child.’
Armstrong fell silent, and when Rita glanced at his face, she saw that the man’s cheeks were glazed with tears.
‘Such feelings do you credit,’ she said. ‘You are the best of fathers. What I have seen of your family today tells me that.’
Armstrong looked into the distance. ‘A hundred times that boy has broken my heart. And he will do it a hundred times more before my days are done.’
They had come to the pig pens. Armstrong fished into a pocket and took out a few acorns. The young pigs came to him with friendly grunts and snuffles and he dealt out acorns and patted flanks and scratched behind ears.
Now Daunt hailed them. He was returning from Collodion with the finished and framed photograph of the Armstrong family. He showed it to Armstrong, who nodded and thanked him.
‘But Mr Daunt, there is another of your photographs I must speak to you about.’
From his pocket he drew out a small frame and turned it to show Rita and Daunt.
‘The fortune-telling pig! You brought it on the day of the fair.’
‘So I did, Miss Sunday.’ Armstrong looked grave. ‘You will remember too that on seeing this pig I was overcome with emotion. Mr Daunt, I know that pig. Her name is Maud. She was my pig. This pig here’ – he indicated the sow daintily eating acorns – ‘is her daughter Mabel, and that little one there, her granddaughter Matilda. Three years or so ago, without a sound, she was taken from this very pen, and from that day I never saw her again until your photograph came to my attention.’
‘She was stolen?’
‘Stolen … Kidnapped … Whatever word you will.’
‘Is it an easy thing, to steal a pig? I wouldn’t want to try and move one.’
‘I don’t know why she didn’t complain. A pig can squeal to wake the whole house if she wants to. There were red stains between here and the road – at first I feared it was blood, but in fact it was raspberry stains. She had a great fondness for raspberries. I suppose that is how they enticed her away.’
He sighed heavily, pointed to a corner of the picture.
‘Now, what do you see here? I believe I see a shadow. I have looked and looked, and it seems to me that it is possible that this shadow belongs to a person, and that this person was standing to the side, out of the way, while the photograph was being exposed.’
Daunt nodded.
‘This photograph is nearly three years old, and I understand that it might not be possible after such a long time to remember who that person was. And perhaps it was not even the person who had charge of Maud at all, but some other person. But I have been thinking that if you were a remembering sort of man, you might be able to tell me something about the owner of this shadow.’
As he spoke, Armstrong looked at Daunt with an expression that had more expectation of disappointment in it than hope.
Daunt closed his eyes. He consulted the images he had stored in his mind. The photograph had primed his memory.
‘A small man. Shorter than Miss Sunday here by eight inches. Slim build. The most striking thing about him was his coat. It was oversized, both too long for him and too broad across the shoulders. I wondered at the time why he wore it on a bright summer day when everyone else was in shirtsleeves. I fancied he might be ashamed of his stature and had hopes the largeness of his garment might convince the eye that there was a matching man inside it.’
‘But what did he look like? Was he old or young? Fair or dark? Bearded or clean-shaven?’
‘Clean-shaven, and his chin was narrow. More than that I cannot say, for he wore his hat so low over his face that he was close to being invisible.’
Armstrong peered at the photograph, as if by dint of staring he could see beyond the edges of the frame and find the short-statured stranger.
‘And he was accompanying the pig?’
‘He was. There is only one other thing I can tell you about him that might be at all significant. I asked him whether he would stand by the pig for the photograph, and he would not. I asked him again, and still he said no. In light of what you have told us today about the theft of your pig, it is telling, is it not, that the man was so adamant he would not be photographed?’
The littlest of the Armstrong girls now came running behind them and called out that tea was ready. She asked for her niece to be put down, and Armstrong put the girl on to her two feet on the ground. Hand in hand, niece and diminutive aunt ran ahead indoors, the older child moderating her speed for the little one.
‘Excuse the informality,’ said Armstrong, ‘but we have tea in the kitchen. It saves time and we can all eat in our work clothes.’
Indoors a large table was set with bread and meat and there were different kinds of cake, and a wonderful smell of baking in the air. The big children put butter on bread for the little ones, and the littlest of all was sat on the knee of her biggest uncle-brother and allowed to have the best of everything. Armstrong himself was intent on making sure that everybody, child and guest, had everything they needed, and in passing plates here and there across the table, was in the end the only one with an empty plate.
‘Serve yourself, my dear,’ prompted Mrs Armstrong.
‘I will in a minute, only there is Pip, who cannot reach the plums …’
‘He would sooner starve than see his children go without,’ she told Rita as she pushed the plums nearer to her son and with the other hand placed bread and cheese on her husband’s plate, though he was now outside the kitchen door pouring milk into a saucer for the cat.
One of the Armstrong girls interrogated Rita on the topic of medicine and ailments and was so quick to follow and understand that Rita turned to the girl’s mother and said, ‘You have a nurse in the making here.’ At the other end of the table, the children were full of questions for Daunt about photography and boating and the quadricycle.
When only crumbs were left, Daunt noticed a lightening in the room and put his head out of the door.
‘Is the darkroom still set up?’
Rita nodded.
‘Could we make the most of the light, do you think? Mr Armstrong, a photograph of the farmer at work, perhaps? Will your horse stand still for ten seconds?’