Against this background, and nourished by the continuing uncertainty about the child’s identity, a seed that had been sown some months ago and given rise to nothing at the time saw a belated germination. The great-aunt of one of the gravel-diggers reckoned she’d seen the child had no reflection when she looked in the river. Now the second cousin of a cressman said that was all wrong. He’d seen the child staring in the river and had witnessed this mystifying thing: the child had two reflections, each one resembling the other in every detail. Spurred by this, other stories began to circulate. That the girl had no shadow, that her shadow had the form of an old crone, that if you looked too long into those peculiar eyes of hers she would benefit from your distracted state to slice your shadow from the soles of your feet and eat it.
‘It’s happened to me!’ an elderly widow with ailments both real and imaginary told Rita, staring at her feet and pointing. ‘The witch’s child has eaten my shadow!’
‘Look up, instead,’ Rita encouraged her. ‘Where is the sun?’
The widow searched the sky. ‘Drowned. Quite drowned.’
‘Yes. There is no sun today, and that is why you have no shadow. There is nothing more to it than that.’
The widow seemed reassured, but it didn’t last. The next thing Rita heard from a patient was that the girl had eaten the sun and brought the rain to wreck the harvest.
In the Swan, they heard this and shrugged. Did it make sense? They recalled that she was dead and then alive again, which no ordinary human could do, but a witch’s child? They pondered, but refrained from endorsing the theory.
Then, in early September, all of this was pushed aside by a novelty. A poster appeared, pinned to one of the beams in the wall of the Swan; it announced that on the night of the autumn equinox there would be a magic lantern show. It was to be provided free by Mr Daunt of Oxford as a gesture of thanks to the people whose quick action and presence of mind had done so much to aid him when he was injured nine months ago.
‘It is a story told in pictures,’ Margot explained to Jonathan. ‘With pictures on glass, I believe, and light passed through them. I don’t know how it works, you’ll have to ask Mr Daunt.’
‘What kind of a story is it?’
But that was a secret.
On the day of the equinox the inn was closed to drinkers – even regulars – until seven o’clock in the evening. Some of the regulars had not been able to believe that this applied to them; they turned up anyway and were outraged at being denied entry. They heard constant noise from inside and saw that the door was forever being opened and closed to allow in strong young men carrying great boxes and crates. They went away, to tell others that they had not been allowed in and that there was something extraordinary going on.
Daunt had begun his preparations early. A hundred times he ran between Collodion and the inn, organizing his own assistants and Armstrong’s boys. Which containers, in which order, to which room … At one point, six men were needed to carry in a large heavy rectangle, concealed under packaging. They lifted it with grave attention and as they inched up the slope, sweating and with strained faces, Daunt did not so much as blink, so intent was his gaze. When it had been carried into the inn successfully, there was a communal sigh of relief and refreshments for all, before they got back to the more ordinary lifting and carrying. Only when Daunt and the Ockwells were alone were the blanket and packing case taken off and the mysterious shape revealed to be a great pane of glass.
‘I’ll set it up here. Nobody must come behind the curtain. The glass will be invisible in the dark. We don’t want any injuries. Now, how’s that paint drying in the main room, for the magic lantern?’
In the afternoon Rita arrived, accompanying a woman who was so draped under a shawl that it was impossible to see her face. Most of the Little Margots came to help, and one of them brought her youngest daughter with her, a little girl of three, who had her own very important role to play.
At half past six, Jonathan was given the honour of unlocking the door and holding it open to let the curious inside. They were all directed to the right, into the large summer room. The Swan was transformed. A velvet drape covered one wall, concealing the arch into the winter room, and another wall – in front of the chairs – had been repainted in fresh white. The tables had gone and instead rows of chairs were serried together, facing the white wall. Behind the seating, raised on a small platform, stood Henry Daunt, with a curious mechanical device and a box of glass plates.
A great many people came in and there was the din of many conversations at once: the farm labourers and the gravel-diggers and all the regulars and their wives and children, and countless people from the neighbouring villages who had got to hear of the show. Armstrong was there with Bess and his older children. He sat with an air of grave restlessness. He had an inkling about part of the content of the show, had indeed helped with the preparation of it. Robin had been invited but was nowhere to be seen, which surprised nobody. The Vaughans were staying away. Knowing in advance what the story was to be, both agreed it would be better not to attend. After all, there was no certainty it would come to anything. They had contributed what was necessary and their presence would in any case be felt in other ways. The Little Margots served cider to all and at precisely seven o’clock Daunt made a short speech of thanks to Joe and Margot. Joe was about to close the door when Lily White arrived, panting, holding a covered basket.
Lily had to sit on a stool at the back, for all the seats were taken. On her knees she held the basket with the red cloth cover, beneath which something was wriggling. She placed a hand to quieten the puppy she had bought that afternoon as a gift for Ann, and it settled. Where was Ann? She peered over the heads of the audience, looking for a small child’s head between two adult ones, but before she had scanned more than a few rows, the lanterns were dimmed and the room was plunged into darkness.
There was an expectant stir, the scuffing of feet on the floor, the arranging of skirts, some throat-clearing; then through all that, a crisp mechanical click was heard and—
Ooh!
Buscot Lodge materialized spectrally on the white wall. The home of the Vaughans: its pale stone facade pierced with seventeen windows arranged in such orderly fashion that nobody could imagine anything but harmony under its quiet grey roof. A few looked to see how the image had flown on to the wall from Daunt’s machine at the back, but most were too entranced to think of that.
Click. Buscot Lodge disappears and Mr and Mrs Vaughan are suddenly in their place. Between them, the wriggling blur of a child – Amelia, aged two. There is a murmur of feeling from the women in the audience.
Click. Giggles – this is not what anyone was expecting: an advertisement, writ large in the stream of light. Daunt reads aloud for the benefit of those who are not quick with their letters, and while he reads, others comment in whispers:
STELLA
The
Sapient Pig
THIS MOST EXTRAORDINARY CREATURE
Will Spell and Read, Cast Accounts,
PLAY AT CARDS,